Accident and Emergency at Royal Preston Hospital is pretty busy right now. Someone just got rushed by with blood painted down the front of their summer dress like an extra in a horror film, and there’s a man sat across from me who seems to be holding his nose on to his face. I’m trying not to think about what’ll happen if he lets go.
I’ve yet to see a member of staff move at anything less than a run. I’m just another person wasting their time. I make a second attempt to get Felicity to let me discharge myself, but she’s having none of it.
‘Not until your friends get here,’ she says firmly, rubbing my good hand between her own. ‘Ooh, your fingers are like ice! How have you managed to have cold hands in this weather!’
Felicity is in her sixties, I’d say, and she radiates maternal instinct. She’s wearing the sort of beige T-shirt you’d find in a charity shop and a pair of jeans with little flowers embroidered at the pockets. Her shiny black hair is pulled back in a neat plait.
She saw me trip on the motorway verge. I admit, it looked bad. I tumbled down towards the hard shoulder and fell on the tarmac, hands outstretched. But I was still miles from the cars, and the hard shoulder was all fenced off because of the roadworks. And yes, I tore the skin of my knees and got blood on my dungarees, and my wrist hurts like hell when I try to clench my fist or move my hand, but I’m fine.
‘Please, Felicity,’ I say. ‘It’s a mild sprain, I don’t need an X-ray, I don’t need to be here. I’m wasting everybody’s time.’
Felicity pats my knee. ‘Shush, love,’ is all she says, craning her neck to follow the path of a passing nurse. ‘Isn’t it a long wait! Shocking! You’d think they’d keep things moving faster, wouldn’t you?’
I bite my lip and hope no NHS staff are within hearing. I check my phone again: no notifications. Surely they’d message if they’d found Deb, which means she’s still roaming around the fields of Lancashire trying to get back to us. Or hitchhiking to Scotland on her own. Or getting murdered by a trucker.
‘Addie?’
My heart leaps. Dylan trips his way through the bags and kids and people between us and then he’s crouching down in front of me, touching my shoulder, eyes searching my face.
‘You’re OK?’
‘I’m absolutely fine,’ I say. ‘A bit of a sprained wrist, that’s all. Will you please tell Felicity to let me go now? She won’t listen to me.’
‘Dylan,’ he says, stretching a hand out to shake Felicity’s. ‘Thank you so much for looking after Addie.’
‘You’re very welcome,’ Felicity says, smiling. ‘She’s a sweet little thing.’
I catch Dylan’s lip quirk.
‘A common misconception,’ I say, and the quirk grows into a quick smile.
I notice Marcus then. He’s hanging back, hands in pockets, watching us from near the door. For a split second before he clocks I’ve seen him, his expression is strange. Like he’s trying to work out the answer to a puzzle. He meets my eyes and his face softens into something that might actually be concern.
‘You OK?’ he mouths.
I blink, surprised, and give a little nod. He smiles slightly and turns away towards the exit.
‘Are you sure you don’t just want someone to check you out?’ Dylan says, brow furrowing again as he takes in the bloodstains on the knees of my dungarees.
‘I’m sure. I want to go.’
Dylan shrugs helplessly at Felicity. ‘Sounds like we’re off, Felicity. Thank you again.’
Felicity clucks her tongue against her teeth. ‘Come, now! She needs to see a doctor!’
Dylan smiles. ‘If you can’t persuade her of that, Felicity, I don’t think I’ve much chance. When Addie makes her mind up . . . that’s that. She doesn’t change it.’
I pick at the dried blood on my dungarees and wonder what Dylan would think if he saw all the emails to him in my drafts folder. The countless times I almost changed my mind. But that’s the thing about almost: you can be ninety-nine per cent there, you can be an inch away from doing it, but if you stop yourself from stepping over that line, nobody will ever know how close you were.
It turns out that asking to be discharged is the quickest way to get a doctor over in A&E. The exhausted young woman gets me to sign that I take full responsibility if I keel over now as a result of discharging myself. She even manages a quick smile before she dashes off again.
The sun is still blazing even now, so bright I have to scrunch up my eyes. It makes it harder to read Marcus’s expression as we approach him at the car. By the time we’re close enough, his face is blank.