He has to steel himself for a moment, remembering the screaming and the blood on the stone floor. Some news channels have been running appalling footage on a loop which brings it back so vividly time and time over, making his stomach churn and his wife cry. He tenses, worrying that the images may appear again right now. Gemma on the floor. That pool of blood. His baby girl’s blood . . .
He grabs the remote from the bedside table and turns off the TV.
His wife spins her head, her eyes full of questions. He takes in the exhaustion and the fear on her face. Also an ache that he recognises – that longing for better news. Any news, actually.
‘There’s nothing new, love. And in any case, DI Sanders is due soon. If there’s anything new, she’ll tell us . . .’
‘Shhh. She’s listening. I know she’s listening.’ Rachel turns back to Gemma to smooth her hair and kiss her forehead with a gentleness that is almost unbearable to witness.
‘We’re here, darling girl. Daddy and me – we’re right here. And we’ll be here when you wake up. Just rest for now. You’re not to worry about anything. You just sleep.’
He clenches his right fist and feels the nails dig into the palm. He finds that he likes this discomfort and so digs the nails a little deeper.
He tries to keep his eyes from moving to the terrible little hill within the bedding. There’s a frame beneath the blanket over her left leg, or rather where her left leg used to be.
How will they tell her? Still he digs his nails deep, deep into his flesh. When she comes round – if she comes round – how the bloody hell will they tell her?
Last night his wife stayed at the hospital and he dashed home to pick up some things. Clothes. Books. Toiletries. Gemma’s favourite perfume. He looked at the flatness of Gemma’s double bed at home – no hill; no nasty frame beneath the duvet – and in the end he swept everything from the top of Gemma’s dressing table, breaking a mirror and a little china dog that she loves. In the early hours he tried to superglue the dog back together, but it looks a mess. Like his daughter’s body.
He hasn’t told his wife yet. About the dog. About Canada . . .
Instead he brought Gemma’s grey rabbit to the hospital with some perfume that his wife has sprayed around the room. She seems to think their daughter will smell it from her coma and somehow be comforted. He thinks this unlikely but has not said so; not out loud.
He stares at the rabbit – a grey rabbit that has been a favourite since Gemma was last in hospital as a tiny girl. Asthma attack. At the time he thought it was the scariest thing he would ever endure as a parent. Four nights in the high-dependency unit. It was bad. But he had no idea back then just how bad ‘bad’ could be . . .
He watches his wife pull her hair up into a high ponytail. For all the exhaustion and the greyness of her skin and the black circles beneath her eyes, her back is straight. She’s extraordinary. His rock. His everything. He remembers her pacing while Gemma had the surgery – up and down the corridor outside the operating theatre. Up and down. Up and down. And the doctor coming out with updates. The two body blows.
They were unable to save the leg. But the baby is OK.
Baby? What baby?
He was actually sick. Retching over and over in the nearest gents.
Kneeling over the toilet bowl, he was looking down at his own knees, wondering what they did with his daughter’s leg. Do they burn it – an amputated limb? Some kind of incinerator? That was what made him vomit. To think of a part of his beautiful little girl. Separate. Gone. Her flesh and blood. His flesh and blood.
Now, back on the ward, in this small and claustrophobic cubicle, he tries very hard not to think of any of these details, but there it is again. The little blanket hill in the bed. His beautiful girl. All chopped up.
‘She’s here.’ His wife signals with her head the arrival of DI Melanie Sanders who’s talking to the uniformed officer outside their little box.
‘We just need to get a drink, my darling.’ Rachel again kisses Gemma’s forehead. ‘We’ll be back very soon.’ Next, she raises her finger to her lips so that he’ll say nothing more until they’re outside.
Waiting for them beyond their daughter’s room, DI Sanders looks pale, which he takes to mean bad news. Or rather no news.
‘How’s she today?’ she asks.
‘The same.’ Rachel is careful to close the door to the cubicle before taking a seat alongside the police inspector. ‘They say the coma is the body’s way of taking a break. It will give time for the swelling on the brain to go down. It’s probably a good thing actually. The coma.’ His wife tucks her hair behind her ear and he wonders if Rachel realises that she has told DI Sanders this already. More than once. ‘We don’t know how long it will be.’