With the mask pressed to my face, I sat up and searched the mess of flashing blue lights and people I didn’t recognise. The friendly fireman had moved away from me. He was crouching over Gus, holding an identical mask over his face and calling urgently to someone I couldn’t see.
Paramedics appeared from nowhere, or at least that was how it seemed to me.
They swarmed the driveway, their footsteps unnaturally loud on the driveway, and they obscured my view of Gus.
I dropped the mask and tried to stand, but strong hands caught me and sat me back down.
Two women dressed in green stooped in front of me. “Stay where you are,” one of them said. “You need oxygen.”
“What about Gus?”
“He’s in good hands, sweetie. Can you tell us what happened?”
“What?”
“What happened in the house? How did you get hurt?
“I’m not hurt. Gus is.”
“What happened to him?”
“I don’t know.”
It went on and on. The paramedics made me breathe more oxygen while more emergency workers crowded around Gus. They lifted him onto a stretcher. His arm dangled limply off the side, and in my heart I got to my feet, dashed to him, and set it safely on his broad chest. But my legs were still numb. Instead I watched as men in orange suits appeared and carried him away to a helicopter that had landed in the field across the road.
The helicopter took off and disappeared. Part of me vanished with it, and breathing the oxygen no longer seemed to matter.
I let the mask go. It fell into my lap. My stomach spasmed, and I lurched sideways and puked.
One of the paramedics caught me and set me upright again. She wiped my face and forced me to look at her. “We’re going to load you into the ambulance in a minute and pop you over to the hospital. Is there anyone you want us to call?”
“What?”
“Do you want us to call someone? So you’re not on your own?”
I’d been alone for as long as I could remember, then the world as I’d assumed it to be had changed. Gus had given me a life I never knew I wanted, but I was more than a sum of the stolen nights we’d shared.
I pointed clumsily at the van still parked on the drive. “Call the number on the van. It’s my brother. I need my brother.”
I came to in a curtained cubicle in the local A&E. A different mask was over my face, and I wasn’t alone. Rough, work-hardened fingers clutched mine, and Luke was beside the bed, looming over me, his handsome features tight with worry.
“Hey. You’re awake. Are you okay? You scared the shit out of me.”
“Where’s Gus?”
“The doctors are working on him. Mia’s there.”
“Is he okay?”
“Not really. But they said he’s probably going to be.”
“Probably?” I struggled upright. “What does that mean?”
“It means he nearly died from carbon monoxide poisoning, but you got him out just in time and called for help.”
“What?” The influx of information made my head spin, but the intense nausea I’d passed out with wasn’t there. “Carbon monoxide? How?”
“The boiler. Gus was working right above it all week. The fire brigade said their detectors went off the scale when they went in there. Said it was likely a leak that got worse over time. That’s why it didn’t kill him on Monday.”
If Luke was trying to be funny, I was going to punch him in the face, but when I focussed on him again, there was no humour in his haunted gaze.
He was still holding my hand.
I squeezed his fingers. “How long have I been here?”
“I don’t know. They called me when I was still on the motorway. We came straight here, but that was a few hours ago.”
“Hours?”
“Yeah. It’s the middle of the night. They kept you in A&E so I could stay with you.”
“What about Gus?”
“I told you. They’re still working on him.”
“Is he awake?”
“No. His oxygen levels are really low. They’re trying to bring them up while they assess the damage to his organs.”
“You said he was going to be okay.”
“He probably is. They’re just being thorough.”
“When will he wake up?”
“I don’t know, Billy. I’m sorry.”
Luke had nothing to be sorry for that he hadn’t apologised for a gazillion times, but I ran out of energy before I could tell him that, and sagged back on the bed. “It’s cold in here.”
“You’re in shock.” Luke pulled a blanket over me. “You were shaking like a leaf when I got here. I thought you were having a fucking seizure.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“You weren’t really with it. You got poisoned too, just not as much as Gus because you weren’t in there as long.”
“He was in there all day.”
“What about you? I don’t understand why you were both there so late.”
“We weren’t. I went home at five, but he wanted to stay and finish the beams. He must’ve passed out after I’d gone. He’d been weird all day, though. All week, actually. Do you think that’s why? Because of the boiler?”
Luke shrugged. “I don’t know. I googled it, then wished I hadn’t, so I didn’t get very far. But I suppose it might be. Or it might’ve had more to do with what was going on between you.”
“What do you mean?”
Luke leant over the bed and pushed my hair out of my face. He coaxed me onto my side and tucked me in like I was five years old and he was our dad. “I don’t know that either. But I want you to know that I’m sorry, okay? That I didn’t take whatever you two have been doing seriously.”
“He doesn’t want to be with me.”
“Tell you that, did he?”
“Not exactly.”
Luke shook his head. “Then don’t assume. You think he’d have been this upset if he didn’t want something more out of this?”
“He said we had to stop because you couldn’t lose me again. That we couldn’t lose each
