‘Blood pressure’s falling. Possible intercranial bleed.’
‘Prep for an MRI,’ the doctor shouts. He seems to have lost some of his calm. ‘Let’s get her sedated.’
No. No. I need to know what’s happening. June. I whisper her name, murmur it like a prayer, but no one seems to hear me, they’re too busy yelling over the top of me. Where’s June? Where’s my daughter? And my husband? Where’s Robert?
‘OK, on three.’
They count down. Three. Two. One. I’m lifted, suspended, dropped and now I’m moving again, flying down a brightly lit corridor, people in blue scrubs flanking me on all sides.
There’s a sudden blast of cold air. I twist my head. Paramedics are rushing through a set of doors, pushing a gurney ahead of them. Doctors in white coats descend on them, calling out a barrage of questions. The flashing lights of an ambulance illuminate them in bright Fourth of July colors. I catch a brief glimpse of the body on the gurney, lying on crimson-soaked sheets. A face, pulped and unrecognizable; a mound of glossy, matted dark hair. Then we’re gone, away, banging through another set of doors. We stop. There are more UFO lights spinning above me, and faces pulling in and out of focus as though someone is twisting a camera lens. A young woman leans over me, not much older than Hannah. She lays a cool hand on my forehead and gives me a reassuring smile.
And then there’s a sharp sting in the back of my hand and the darkness comes again, but this time it’s instant, like someone flicking off a light switch.
I’m there one moment and gone the next.
Chapter 7
DAY 2
The sound of a car reversing. I wish it would stop. Surely you can only reverse for so long before you have to go forwards?
‘Ava?’
A beam of light spears my brain. It’s an ice-cream headache times a thousand. I wince and try to squeeze my eyes shut but I can’t get away from it. Someone is prizing open my eyelids and stabbing my eyeballs with an electrified fork.
‘Mrs Walker?’
A brown blur swims in front of me. Slowly he comes into focus. It’s the doctor from before. ‘Hi,’ he says.
‘June,’ I say. My lips are dry, my throat so sore it feels as if it’s been sandpapered, but I force the word out.
‘Let’s get you some water,’ the doctor says, and places a plastic straw between my lips.
Frustrated, I try to push it away, but my arms are heavy and tangled up. Wires holding me down; wires and tubes leading to machines that beep. Not cars reversing. The straw is forced between my lips again and this time I sip. It feels like the only way I’ll get an answer, and the water is so good, so cold and pure that it cuts through the fuzziness in my head.
‘I’m Dr Warier,’ the man says. ‘I’m an ICU physician. You had us worried for a moment there.’
‘June,’ I say again, making sure I enunciate the word properly. ‘Robert.’
A shadow passes over his face. He swallows. ‘I’m sorry . . .’
Sorry? What does that mean? Oh God. Please not both. Please not either of them. The beeping sound to the left crescendos. Dr Warier is on his feet.
‘Ava? Ava?’
He punches a button on the wall behind the bed and suddenly people wearing scrubs rush into the room. Dr Warier starts rattling off some numbers and words I don’t understand. Why can’t they speak in English?
A man’s voice cuts through it all. ‘Is everything OK? Can we speak to her?’ It’s a voice I recognize. A man’s voice. Not Robert’s.
‘Sir, if you could just leave the room,’ someone says to him.
Darkness starts to blot the edges of my vision. A shadow looms over me.
‘Ava.’
I’m falling backwards, slipping off the deck of a ship into icy waters below, nothing to grip on to. I don’t even try.
‘Ava?’
Gone.
Chapter 8
‘Ava.’
Nate? I wake, confused. Where am I? I turn my head. Robert is sitting in the hospital chair beside my bed. His face is puffy and shiny, like an overripe eggplant that’s on the verge of splitting its skin. One eye bulges obscenely as though an egg has been laid beneath the lid.
‘Oh God,’ he says the moment he sees my eyes flicker open. ‘I thought I’d lost you.’
‘What happened?’ I ask.
‘You were hit around the head. You lost a lot of blood and they were worried about the possibility of a cranial bleed, but it’s OK. You’re going to be OK. How are you feeling?’
I groan. It hurts to open my eyes. My head pounds. I try to remember what happened. My hand creeps upwards to the back of my head where I feel a strange tingling and tightness on the scalp right where the painful throbbing is worst. My fingers brush a bandage of some kind, about an inch behind my ear.
Robert snatches my hand away. ‘Don’t touch,’ he says. ‘They had to give you stitches. After the MRI. Do you remember what happened? They think he must have hit you with the barrel of the gun.’
Gun. Everything rushes in as though a dam has been blown, images piling on top of one another, clamoring to be the first I see. The house. The men. Those masks. June walking up the stairs. June on her knees. The man in the skull mask turning to me with the gun in his hand.
It’s a silent question. There’s no way I can voice it. But he hears it anyway. Is she alive?
His one good eye is shining – but not with excitement or happiness. With pain. It’s bright with it, alive with it. His hand is squeezing mine so hard the bones crunch. He bows his head. His shoulders shake.
I know what he’s going to say before he says it and I don’t want to hear it so I turn my head away, wishing I could slip overboard, fall back into the ice-cold water again and this time let it
