it have to be Jamie lying unconscious in the bed? Not that she could say this out loud, it wouldn’t be polite and it might hurt Todd’s feelings. Anyway, that was the thing about life and fate; it never was fair. Horrific things happened to good people and brilliant things happened to bad ones.
And it wasn’t as if Todd was even bad. It was just that out of the two of them, he wasn’t the one she loved with all her heart.
But he did love Jamie. Sitting back down, Ellie watched him move across to the bed and rest a hand on Jamie’s bare shoulder. A muscle jumped in his jaw as he gazed, ashen-faced, at his best friend.
Bip. Bip. Bip.
Bip. Bip.
Bippppppppppppppppppp…
‘Oh God, what’s happening? No no no—’
‘Don’t panic.’ The nurse bustled over, reclipped the electrode lead that had popped off when Todd’s sleeve had brushed Jamie’s clavicle. ‘There you go,’ she said as the regular bips resumed. ‘All fixed.’
‘Sorry.’ Visibly shaken, Todd backed away from the bed and wiped a slick of perspiration from his upper lip.
When the nurse had left them alone again, Ellie said, ‘How did it happen?’
‘I don’t know.’ A helpless shrug. ‘We weren’t going too fast. The car just took a bend and went into a skid. It was like slow motion, but kind of speeded up at the same time. I said, “Oh shit,” and Jamie said, “Oh fuck.”’ His knuckles turning white with the effort of holding back the tears, Todd said, ‘We didn’t even know there was ice on the road until it was too late.’ His voice broke. ‘And then we just… went.’
***
Todd had left. More tests were carried out. Jamie’s bruises grew bluer. Night came and so did Jamie’s father; calling the unit, Tony informed them that he had just landed at Heathrow and was on his way to the hospital. The nurse who spoke to him recognized his voice and put two and two together. Within minutes, word had spread that Jamie was the son of Tony Weston… you know, the actor. Behind the professional exteriors, excitement grew. Watching them, hoping against hope, Ellie wondered if this meant they would somehow make more of an effort to help Jamie recover. Because if all they needed was an incentive to try harder, maybe she should offer them cash.
Then a vivid mental image sprang into her mind and she smiled, just fractionally, at the thought of explaining that to Jamie when he arrived home, gazed in disbelief at the bank statement, and demanded to know why she’d emptied their joint account.
Forty minutes later, Tony appeared. In his midfifties, tanned, and handsome, he was immediately recognizable to the staff as the respected actor who had moved to America and made his name as the quintessential upper-class Englishman, despite having been born and raised in a two-up two-down on a council estate in Basingstoke. If everyone else on the unit was discreetly thrilled to be seeing him in the flesh, Ellie felt only relief. She no longer had to be the one in charge. Jamie’s dad was here and he was a proper grown-up. Tears of exhaustion leaked out of her eyes as he hugged her.
‘Oh, sweetheart.’ It was all Tony said, all he needed to say. He smelled of airplanes and coffee and expensively laundered shirts; he was also unshaven. Turning his attention to Jamie, he gazed at him in silence and seemed to vibrate with pain. Finally he murmured, ‘Oh, my baby boy,’ and his voice cracked with grief.
The doctor materialized within minutes and introduced himself. Ellie watched him carry out the various neurological tests the doctors had been performing at regular intervals since Jamie’s arrival in the unit. She studied the expression on the man’s face, searching for clues, waiting for him to stop looking so grim and break into a smile of relief before turning to them and saying, ‘He’s really on the mend now, give him another couple of hours and then he’ll start waking up.’
Go on, say it.
Please, just say it.
The smile didn’t happen. She and Tony sat together in silence at Jamie’s bedside and watched the still-serious doctor write something in the hospital notes. Finally he turned to face them and Ellie felt as if her chair had been abruptly pulled away. A great rushing sound filled her ears; was this nature’s way of drowning out the words she already knew she didn’t want to hear?
The rushing sound was loud, but sadly not loud enough to