supposed Jack would know. ‘So, you’ve travelled millions of miles to find the job of your dreams,’ he said, and indicated she should board the lift. ‘Working for the minimum wage in a South Wales Hotel. Doesn’t get better than that, eh?’
The Vredosian lowered her spiny eyelashes and ignored him. She wasn’t dangerous; just another bloody nuisance in a city that already had enough of them to worry about without a flea-carrying extraterrestrial working illegally in the Welsh service industry. God, just imagine the
Owen studied his own reflection in the mirrored wall of the lift. Is this what he’d become – a nursemaid to vagrant aliens? He put his left hand up to his face experimentally, aware again that he could feel nothing. The glove covered his permanently broken left finger. It also enclosed the tatty crepe bandage that held the splint in place, in turn concealing the scalpel cut across his palm that would never heal and that required re-stitching each week. He stroked one finger down a sideburn. The first day home after his return from the dead, he’d had a careful shave – his final shave, as it happened. He’d never have five o’clock shadow again. The beard would never grow back. On the bright side, he’d never get hair in his ears like his dad. And he’d had to decide, right then in front of the bathroom mirror in his apartment, whether he wanted to lose those sideburns for the rest of his life. No, not life – his
Owen was still contemplating this when the lift pinged for the ground floor, the mirrored doors slid open, and his reflection disappeared.
The pair stepped into the lobby area. Bright morning sunshine spilled through the revolving doors and sparkled on the brass fittings. Orange pumpkin decorations glowed as though they had internal illumination. A couple of kids bounced on the leather couches while their parents waited in the check-out line.
Should have taken the service lift to the basement, thought Owen. He had to get the Vredosian across town to the Hub. What was he gonna do, order a taxi? He hadn’t brought his car, but he was damned if he was going to call Ianto to get assistance. And Toshiko would be so solicitous, so eager, so nice about everything that he didn’t think he could bear it.
He didn’t have to think about it for long. From beyond the revolving door came the sound of car horns, angry shouting, and a tremendous crash of metal and glass. There was a flurry of movement in the lobby as guests and staff hurried to look out of the windows. From the first shocked comments he overheard, Owen knew there’d been a serious traffic accident.
Quite how serious he didn’t know until he and the Vredosian got out into the street. The sound of pedestrians screaming was brutally loud once he’d got through the revolving door. Further along the street one of those jointed single-deck buses lay cracked and helpless, partly embedded in a glass shopfront. The DragonLine bus had evidently mounted the angled earthworks by the road repairs, twisting as it went, and then slid helplessly along the road until it mounted the opposite pavement. The concertinaed front of a white van showed where it had careered into oncoming traffic before finally coming to rest with its roof jammed into Wendleby’s department store. Jagged panes from what remained of the store’s plate-glass window rained down like murderous icicles. The rear of a big display poster flapped into the street. He could just read the remains of the shredded banner: ‘MonstaQuest Demonstration Today!’ it declared.
Owen fully expected that he was the first medic on the scene. Beside him in the shadow of the Withington Hotel’s Edwardian portico, the Vredosian flicked surreptitious glances to either side, judging whether she could make a break for freedom. Owen considered the yells of the pedestrians and the roar of the felled bus’s engine. He tutted at the Vredosian and tossed over the key to the thumb-cuffs. ‘Your lucky day,’ he told her. He jogged over to the crash scene, muttering: ‘Some of these won’t have been so fortunate.’
He pushed past the early rubberneckers. ‘Stay back,’ he snapped at them. A peroxide blonde gave him a surly look. ‘You got a mobile?’ he asked her
‘Yeah,’ she said.
Owen stared straight at her. ‘Phone 999.’ The blonde looked surprised. ‘Do it now,’ he told her. She was so shocked that she did so straight away.
The filthy underside of the bus growled angrily nearby, mud and water dripping from its grimy surfaces. The engine was still churning and the transmission whirled. Owen ran round to the back of the bus and slammed his glove on the emergency stop. The engine chattered into silence, which made the hiss of leaking air and the screams of the passengers more audible.
A black and white cab was squished up onto the pavement between Wendleby’s and the overturned rear section of the bus. Owen jumped on the bonnet, then over its cracked ‘For Hire’ sign and up onto the side of the bus. He traversed the length of the coachwork, sensing the metal panels give beneath his weight as he approached the front. The DragonLine emblem, a stylised motif in red and green, twisted its way down the painted body, as though marking out a path for him. At the snarling head of the painted dragon, the orange lights of the destination board in its jaws flashed intermittently, unable to decide where the bus was headed; 207 Lisvane via Llanishen stuttered into 102 Victoria Park and back again.
There was a banging sound from beneath his feet. Owen looked down and saw a scared face looking up at him in desperation. A middle-aged woman hammered with a bloodied fist against the entry doors, slamming against strips of glass that had now become the ceiling that trapped her inside the bus. She forced her fingers through the rubber seal, desperate to pry the doors apart. The blood on her fingers made it too slick to grasp, and her fingers slipped out of sight. She smacked against the glass in utter frustration, leaving a smeared bloody palm print on the glass.
Owen waved her away, hit the emergency door control, and kicked hard on the doors. They flick-flacked open, and he dropped carefully through the gap.
The bus was filled with terrified shouts and screams. The noise worried Owen most. Since he’d lost his senses of touch and taste and smell, he’d become more attuned to sights and sounds. With one side of the vehicle pressed against the pavement, half of the windows were now obscured which meant the flickering lights cast a twilight pall over the interior.
An angry man in his twenties tried to seize Owen’s lapels, but Owen eased him aside. ‘I’m a doctor,’ he said loudly but calmly. ‘Let me help these people. You seem to be mobile?’
The angry man looked a little cowed.
‘Good,’ continued Owen briskly. ‘So help these people climb out of the front doors. I’ll check on the others.’
In the crash, passengers on the left had been thrown forward and to the right. People struggled to free themselves from the piled bodies crushed against the roadside windows. As the walking wounded struggled forward to the newly opened doors, Owen decided to start his triage at the back of the vehicle. He stepped gingerly on the edges of seats, making his way to the rear, calling for calm. Bodies slumped against windows that were etched in red where blood had seeped through the cracked glass. And beyond that, the stark grey of the road. Hands grasped at his legs as he passed. He muttered apologies for not stopping, and promised to return.
Owen reached the rear of the bus at last, and started to offer advice about raising injured limbs and applying pressure to wounds. He knew he himself would be unable to detect pulses, so he directed willing passengers to assist, indicating where they should feel for the carotid or radial arteries.
A woman who might have been in her forties was crying softly, saying over and over that she couldn’t stay, her daughter would be waiting, she needed her mobile phone.
‘What’s your name, my love?’ Owen asked her.
‘Shona,’ said the woman. ‘I’m going to be late for my daughter.’
She was wedged in among the bent steel of a seat. She stared up at Owen, her hands clutching the mangled metal frame. As Shona tried to lever herself out, her eyes pleaded with him.
‘Give me a hand,’ demanded a grey-haired man, nudging Owen’s arm.
‘It doesn’t hurt, Daniel,’ said Shona. ‘It’s just, I’m stuck.’
‘We only just met,’ said the grey-haired guy. ‘Bloody funny time to make new acquaintances. Anyway, barely a scratch on her. Let’s get her out of here.’
Owen tugged him aside and spoke directly into the man’s ear. ‘Can’t tell whether she has internal injuries. Please wait.’ He looked beneath the seat as the old guy fumed beside him and Shona continued to whimper. Owen could see her legs were twisted out of shape. Fresh blood streamed down. In the cramped and chaotic conditions, he knew he could do nothing for her. She couldn’t feel any pain. Owen felt the familiar sick helplessness of his early days in A amp;E, when he’d been at the site of his first RTA. He wanted to save this woman, get her to her
