Chameleon

my love,' he said softly.

'I'll have to deal with that arm,' said Evans, standing behind him and after a few moments, Jamieson complied with the hand that was put on his shoulder. He got up but continued to watch Sue as Evans stopped the bleeding in his arm with a make-shift tourniquet. The ambulance arrived and took Jamieson and Sue back to Kerr Memorial.

Sue regained consciousness in the ambulance. Her relief at seeing Jamieson sitting beside her was suddenly eclipsed by the memory of what he had done to save her. 'Your arm!' she whispered. 'Your poor arm!'

'It will be fine,' Jamieson assured her.

Sue looked to Clive Evans for confirmation and Evans concurred.

'Oh Scott!' Sue exclaimed as emotion overtook her and tears started to flow.

'There, there,' murmured Jamieson. 'You are safe now Sue. We both are. He took her hand.'

Sue began to shiver. Jamieson felt it begin with a little tremor in her hand but the shaking began to spread until she could not speak properly and her whole body was trembling. 'That man…' she stammered. 'How could anyone…' Jamieson tried to hold Sue with one arm and attempted to reassure her but inside, he was hurting. The pain from his arm was getting steadily worse and it was now starting to come in waves, each one stronger than the last until one finally washed away his consciousness and he slumped backwards into Evans' arms.

FOURTEEN

'I'm sorry. She's lost the baby,' said Phillip Morton who had been called in to examine Sue.

Jamieson nodded and looked away. He had no wish to look anyone in the eye when he felt this vulnerable. In his heart he had known what Morton was going to say. He had known from the moment that he had heard someone say that Sue was bleeding. He had only been semi-conscious at the time and lying on a trolley being wheeled into A amp;E, but snatches of conversation had drifted through to him. Hearing was always the last thing to go and the first to come back.

Now that his pain was under control and his arm had been cleaned up and stitched he had been sitting waiting with Clive Evans who had volunteered to keep him company until Morton had completed his examination of Sue. Despite fearing the worst, he had been clinging to a wisp of hope that it had all been some kind of misunderstanding on his part and that everything was going to be all right. Morton snuffed out the candle of hope and Jamieson felt his shoulders sag and his limbs start to feel very heavy.

'I'm sorry,' said Evans, putting his hand on Jamieson's shoulder.

'Bad luck,' said Morton. 'But she's young and strong and there's no reason why…'

Jamieson had stopped listening. He knew the routine. He just wanted to be with Sue. 'I'd like to see her now,' he said.

'Of course,' said Morton and stood back to allow Jamieson to pass.

Jamieson opened the door with his left hand; his right arm was bound up in a sling. Sue was lying motionless on the bed, her eyes fixed on the ceiling.

'Hi,' said Jamieson softly. 'How are you feeling?' The words turned to acid in his mouth. He knew exactly how she was feeling but he had to start somewhere and beginnings demanded words.

Sue continued to stare at the ceiling as if she hadn't heard and then Jamieson saw a tear start to roll down her cheek. She turned her head to look at him. 'I'm sorry,' she whispered. 'I'm so sorry.'

'You idiot!' whispered Jamieson taking her hand in his, 'You are all that matters. Nothing else.'

'But you wanted the baby so much,' said Sue, the tears now flowing freely.

'There will be others. We've got all the time in the world. Right now you are all that is important. God! I was so relieved to find you alive… I can't begin to tell you how worried I was. I was going out of my mind…'

Sue put a hand up to his lips and whispered, 'I know, I know.'

They held each other in silence for a moment, happy that the need for words had been overcome and they were truly together again. Sue said, 'I can't seem to stop thinking about what would have happened if you had driven up to the garage instead of walking. I just go through it over and over again. It's a nightmare I just can't seem to escape from. Why did you stop down the road from the garage? What made you do that?'

Jamieson stroked her hair. 'You can thank a traffic jam for that. It gave me time to think.'

'Tell me,' said Sue.

Jamieson told her about his initial panic stricken dash to what had turned out to be the wrong address and then how he had started to consider the motives behind the phone call, including the possibility of a cruel hoax. 'So I stopped at the phone box round the corner from the garages and called the hospital to check if you were still there. Evans told me that you had gone into town earlier so I asked him to call the police. When I came out of the phone box I was so close to the lane that I left the car where it was and ran round on foot.'

'Thank God,' said Sue.

'I'll second that,' said Jamieson.

'Scott?'

'Yes?'

'What did the man say on the phone?'

'A lot of sick nonsense.'

'What exactly?' asked Sue.

Jamieson told her.

'That was untrue you know?'

Jamieson squeezed her shoulder.

'I don't want you thinking that I lost the baby because of anything he did to me like that. He didn't touch me in that way. I think I lost the baby because he just scared me so much. It sounds silly now that you're here and I'm all safe and warm but at the time

… I thought he was the killer, the man who cut up all these women. I never knew I could be so frightened.'

Jamieson soothed Sue as she started to shake again. When she had calmed down he said softly, 'Clive tells me that the police are waiting downstairs to talk to you if you feel up to it.'

Sue made a face.

'If you can't face it tonight I can tell them that but the sooner they get on with catching that lunatic the better, so anything you can tell them…'

'Can you stay with me?'

'We could make that a condition,' said Jamieson.

'All right. I'll see them now. Correction, we'll see them now.'

Jamieson left the room to tell the Staff Nurse in charge of the ward that Sue had agreed to talk to the police provided that he was allowed to stay with her. He waited in the duty room until the two police officers came up the stairs and introduced themselves to him. He was pleased to find that they both seemed decent, sympathetic individuals but he still felt he should remind them of what Sue had been through.

'We do understand sir,' said the inspector. 'We'll be as brief as we possibly can.'

Sue told the police about the man in the store and the subsequent train of events.

'You say that he said he wanted revenge?' asked the inspector.

'That's what he said.'

'But he didn't say for what or give any indication?'

'No.'

'And you say you have never seen this man before?'

'No. Apart from on the bus down.'

The policemen looked at each other. 'The bus down?' asked the inspector.

'Yes, he was on the same bus into town. He got off where I did.' said Sue as if this had been an irrelevant detail.

'You didn't say anything about that earlier,' said Jamieson.

'Didn't I? Sorry.'