Fran shrank another few millimetres. ‘Yes.’
Harry needed more, but his dad plainly thought that his social duties had been fulfilled. He obviously wanted to be off – as he had for the past fourteen hours. ‘Well, send her our love. And to Marcus, of course. We’ll keep in touch. If there’s anything we can do, let us know?’ He started edging away, looking at Harry, silently telling him to stand up.
Harry stayed put. This was not adequate. No way. It was not enough. ‘How is she really, Fran?’
Fran reached out and rested her fingertips on the top edge of his bandage, lightly, carefully. ‘She’s very poorly, Harry. They’re doing lots of tests. The damage is hard to assess apparently. So it’s just a case of waiting, and praying.’ Fran forced herself to sit a little taller. ‘But she’s calm and she’s not in any pain. I promise.’ Jesus, she was trying to make him feel better.
Dom cut in again. ‘You are all in our thoughts. We’ll keep in touch. But I really think I need to get this young man home. It’s been a very long night, and day.’ As he bent down to kiss Fran on the cheek, Harry had the urge to shove his father away from her.
‘Can I come and see her?’ Harry asked.
Fran said, ‘Maybe in a few days, Harry, when we know more. I’ll text you.’
‘You promise?’ He sounded like a child.
‘Yes, Harry. I promise.’
Still Harry couldn’t leave. He had other people’s blood on his hands. ‘Have you heard how Tish is doing? And Jake? They wouldn’t tell me anything. They kept saying they weren’t allowed to, because of patient confidentiality.’
Dom started running the parking ticket through his fingers. Harry tried to block him out.
‘Tish is on the same unit as Jess. I can’t lie, Harry; she’s not in a good way. There’s a lot of damage to her face and neck. Her jaw was broken in the crash. They’ve had to pin it back together. And she’s been having some breathing problems.’
Harry thought he might as well curl up there and then on the floor.
Fran looked at him, her face pale and drawn with tiredness, but then she did what good mums do – she tried to make it better. ‘They’re doing everything they can for them both. We have to trust in their skills. Give it some time. It’s amazing what people can recover from, Harry. We all just have to keep the faith.’
He made himself smile in the face of her bravery.
‘And it is better news about Jake. Anita messaged me to say that the surgery on his leg went well. Apparently he’s already being cheeky with the nurses.’
Dom was shifting from foot to foot. ‘Well, that’s good to hear. I really don’t want to be rude, Fran. But if it’s okay with you, we need to be going. We’ve got to get back…for Martha.’
Fran ignored Dom and instead looked straight at Harry. A flash of the old Fran. He steeled himself; he knew what she was going ask. He had prepared himself for her asking it, thought about nothing else all night. She had the right to know. There was a beat of silence. ‘Harry, what happened?’
The words clotted in his throat. ‘I’m so sorry. It was an accident.’
Fran touched his arm again, sympathy and pressure in one gesture. ‘I know that, but I need to know what actually happened – what caused the crash.’
A cacophony of images and sounds bubbled up inside Harry – too many, all clambering and competing, scrambling over each other in their awfulness. He struggled, trying to compose his answer into something as coherent and as close to the truth as possible, but before he managed to settle on one fact to begin with, Dom leapt in. ‘Fran. I’m sorry. But now really isn’t the time. He’s still in shock. He’s had virtually no sleep. None of us have. We’re all strung out by what’s happened. We will speak soon, I promise. But we really have to go now.’
And, like the coward he obviously was now, Harry allowed himself to be dragged away – because he couldn’t face telling Fran the truth.
Chapter 18
FRAN WENT back up to the ICU shaken by her chance meeting with Harry and Dom. She was relieved that Harry had escaped with so little damage, but their encounter had rattled her. Their conversation had been so pressurised, so full of emotion, yet at the same time so devoid of information. She knew no more than she had fourteen hours ago. And Dom had been weird – itching to get away, seemingly anxious to stop Harry talking. But as she stepped out of the lift, Fran pushed the stirrings of disappointment and resentment to the back of her mind. She had other priorities. She buzzed to be allowed back onto the ward, wishing, with every fibre of her being, that Jess was anywhere else in the hospital or even – as Harry was lucky enough to be – going home with barely a scratch.
For all the efforts of the staff to be compassionate and supportive, the ICU was an alien, frightening environment. White, bright, harsh – full of complex, high-tech machinery and inexplicable noises. The best of everything, staffed by the most qualified medical professionals, designed to care for the most critical cases.
Jess and Tish were now two of those cases.
The contrast between the two girls was profound.
Jess looked unnervingly unchanged, except for the machine that was breathing for her and the absolute stillness of her body. A sleeping beauty: her face glacial, her eyes, beneath their paper-thin lids, motionless. The wound at the back of her head was neatly dressed. Her skin was clear and unblemished. She looked like she looked every evening when she came down to say ‘goodnight’: make-up free, their little girl once again. But it was what they couldn’t see – what was being scanned and measured by the sophisticated machines, minute by minute – that was the problem. Jess’s bruising and swelling and damage were all internal. It was her tender brain within her fragile skull that they were worried about.
The damage to Tish’s body was much more obvious. Shockingly so. She looked like she’d been viciously beaten. She was barely recognisable beneath all the dressings and tubes. Only her hair and her hands seemed to have escaped being crushed. Though even from right across the room Fran could see the thin rims of black blood under her fingernails. Tish was not fighting her injuries quietly or calmly, like Jess. Despite the huge quantity of pain relief they were pumping into her, she was restless, her breathing loud and raspy, as she tried to vent the pain that had hold of her body. Every time they had to move her or re-dress her wounds, Fran and Marcus heard Tish cry out in protest. Sal – mirroring her daughter’s restlessness – was up and down, out of her seat every few minutes, stroking Tish’s hand, straightening her sheets, trying desperately to provide some comfort to the tiny slivers of her child that were still available to her.
Every half-hour or so both women would walk the ten steps across the ward to meet each other in the middle; to touch base, to ground each other’s panic, to say ‘I’m here’ by a hand on an arm or simply by standing vigil by the girls’ bedsides while the other went to the toilet or to fetch a drink. Neither of them asked any direct questions about how each girl was doing any more. It was unnecessary, and it would have been cruel.
Their daughters were in the ICU.
Both girls were critically ill.