Questions of Trust A Medical Romance - By Sam Archer Page 0,61

halfway out of his door and with his hands in his hair. And in the road in front of the new car, like a cast-off rag, Rebecca’s body sprawled, her hair fanned out on the tarmac.

Even as Chloe gaped, unable to comprehend what she was seeing, she glimpsed from the corner of her eye Tom bolting out through the front door and sprinting up the driveway.

No… no…

Chloe came to her senses and raced to the front door, following Tom. The driver of the other car was stooped over Rebecca, shouting himself but not touching her, as though she were contaminated. By the time Chloe reached them Tom was crouched at his ex-wife’s side. People were starting to emerge from the doors of houses along the street, alerted by the sound of the impact.

Tom looked round at Chloe.

‘Call 999.’

She thumbed the emergency number in and reached a dispatcher immediately. Beside her, the driver of the car that had hit Rebecca was moaning: ‘She just came running out… I didn’t see her… I’m so sorry.’ Chloe frowned at him and held a finger to her lips.

She recited a few details to the operator, then folded her phone away. ‘It’s on its way,’ she said. To the drover she said, ‘Please. Keep back.’ When he didn’t move she took him gently by the arm and drew him on to the pavement, then returned to Tom.

Rebecca was crumpled with one leg at an awkward angle. There was blood on her dress, not a lot of it but enough to stain the expensive silk grotesquely. She was breathing, Chloe noticed, but it wasn’t a normal sort of breathing. Her chest was jerking in gasps, and as Chloe watched, Rebecca’s lips seemed to be turning an ominous blue.

Tom’s hands roved over Rebecca, probing, feeling for injuries, Chloe assumed. His fingers moved to her throat and he felt for her pulse, then laid his middle finger on the centre of her throat where a man’s Adam’s apple would be. Then he pressed his ear to her chest, beneath each breast in turn, raised his head once more and laid a hand on her chest, moving it about and tapping on one of his knuckles with a finger on his other hand. The tapping produced a hollow sound on the left side, but on the right, Chloe thought it sounded like rapping on a solid concrete wall.

Tom muttered something grimly to himself which Chloe didn’t catch. He glanced up at her. ‘Have you got something sharp? Scissors, a nail file?’

She fumbled in her bag, which she still had slung over her shoulder as she hadn’t taken it off inside the house, and brought out a small pair of scissors which she handed to Tom.

‘And I need a pen’

‘What?’ She wasn’t sure she’d heard right.

‘A ballpoint pen. Quickly.’

There was a cheap plastic pen at the very bottom of the bag. This too Chloe passed it to Tom. He removed the cap and pulled the nib out, then snapped about one third of the length of the plastic off.

Chloe stared in appalled fascination as Tom tore open the front of Rebecca’s dress, then probed with his fingertips below the right cup of her bra near her armpit. He seemed to find the spot he was looking for and, keeping it marked with one finger, he pressed the closed points of the scissors against the bared skin. Chloe cringed as the metal points penetrated the flesh. Rebecca didn’t flinch, but her mouth and cheeks were turning a deeper tint of blue.

Tom worked with his fingers, widening the slit he’d made. Then he grasped the broken casing of the ballpoint pen and pushed the jagged plastic end into the hole. He twisted it slightly, grimacing.

And Chloe heard a hiss of air, as if a balloon were suddenly being deflated. Rebecca began to gasp, but it was much freer breathing now. Rapidly her face started to lose its ghastly blue-grey tinge.

In the distance, a siren was approaching rapidly.

Tom slumped forward, a hand across his mouth, sweat matting his hair to his forehead. Below him Rebecca was groaning, shifting lightly, rolling her head from side to side. But breathing.

The ambulance came screaming up, and events began to move even more quickly after that. All Chloe remembered clearly from that time was Tom’s face. Exhausted, bewildered, it was the face of a man who’d suffered more in the way of conflicting emotion in a short time than anyone deserved to experience.

It was the face of