towards the bed. She had her winter jacket and gloves on, as if she’d been about to leave.
‘I’ll fetch the nurse,’ Kerry said, before dashing off again.
James tried to sit up, but Lauren sat on the edge of the bed and pushed him down gently.
‘You’ll pull your tubes out.’
‘But I’m busting,’ James explained.
‘Just go,’ Lauren said gently. ‘You’re all wired up down there.’
‘Eh?’
‘With a catheter and a bag.’
James shuddered. He knew that catheters are inserted into the penis, and while he had no memory of it going in, he immediately realised that he’d have to endure the painful procedure of it being yanked out at some point in the future.
Even with covers over him, James felt weird having Lauren sitting next to him as the high-ceilinged hospital room echoed with the sound of his pee running into a bag.
‘How long have I been here?’
‘Since yesterday,’ Lauren said. ‘But you were in a hospital in Finland for two days before that.’
‘You mean, like a coma or something?’
‘Not a full-blown coma, but you’ve been drifting in and out of consciousness. You’re groggy now because they gave you a general anaesthetic this morning, before you went down to theatre.’
‘Theatre?’
‘You’ve got a broken rib. They made a little incision in your chest and pulled out a loose bone fragment. They also did a bit more work on your broken nose while you were under.’
‘The last thing I remember is shutting the door of an aeroplane … And a bloke with a bloody knee and …’
‘That was Saturday,’ Lauren nodded. ‘It’s Wednesday now. You had a blood clot inside your nose. As the plane rose up, the atmospheric pressure dropped, the gas trapped inside your sinuses expanded and the pain knocked you out. The pilot had to make an emergency landing in Helsinki.’
Kerry came back into the ward, followed by a fat nurse. He gave James a huge smile and spoke with a Caribbean accent as he pulled a small torch out of his pocket.
‘Nice having you back with us, James,’ he said. ‘Look at the light and try to follow it with your eyes.’
James obediently tracked the narrow beam as it moved in front of his face.
‘Great stuff,’ the nurse smiled, as he pushed a few buttons on a monitoring device beside the bed. It hummed as it spat out a length of curled-up paper.
‘This looks fine,’ the nurse said, as he studied the figures. ‘How do you feel?’
James shrugged. ‘I just feel a bit dull, like I’m all wrapped in cotton wool or something.’
‘Anything else?’
‘My nose hurts and I’m completely starving.’
Lauren looked at the nurse. ‘Is he OK?’
The nurse nodded reassuringly. ‘He’ll be confused for the next couple of hours. But his heart rate and blood oxygen levels are healthy. Doctor Packard should be here shortly and I expect he’ll run a few tests before he’s satisfied, but it all looks fine to me.’
‘Your blood oxygen level was dangerously low when you arrived in Helsinki,’ Lauren explained. ‘They were worried that you might have brain damage.’
‘I’ll come back tomorrow,’ Kerry smiled, as the nurse headed out of the room.
‘Can’t you stay a bit longer?’ James asked.
Kerry shook her head. ‘It’s midnight. I was on my way out ten minutes ago. My cab driver will be losing his rag.’
‘Night then,’ James said, as Kerry reluctantly headed for the door. Then he turned towards Lauren. ‘What about you?’
‘Nah,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I’ll sit with you as long as you like. When you arrived here yesterday I told them that I wasn’t leaving the hospital until you did. Zara got cross with me, but when …’ Lauren stopped talking and gave a massive sob. ‘When …’
James reached out from under his sheets and put his hand on Lauren’s knee.
‘At first, when you were missing I was so scared,’ Lauren sobbed. ‘Then they found you and I was OK. But then they said about the emergency landing and you were drifting in and out of consciousness and they didn’t know how badly injured you were. So when you got back here I … I told Zara that the only way I’d leave your side was if they dragged me out kicking and screaming.’
James felt his eyes blurring with tears. ‘Come on sis, I’m gonna be OK.’
‘I know we have our own friends and that, James, but you and me are special. We go all the way back to when Mum was alive. I mean, I can remember when I could barely walk and I used