by Cari Hunter
From where Rosie was sitting, she could only catch glimpses of Jem, but nothing she was hearing sounded good. She stood up and chanced a couple of steps to her right, keeping her back to the cubicle’s curtain. Everyone remained engrossed in their respective tasks, and no one scolded her or sent her back to the chair. No one even seemed to notice, aside from Jem, who waited until a doctor had drawn a blood sample from her wrist, and then beckoned Rosie over.
“Do you want me to phone your dad?” Rosie asked.
Jem shook her head. “He’ll worry.”
“Is this not worth worrying about?” Every number on the screen was red and flashing, and Jem’s sats were back to hovering in the high eighties.
“Been worse,” Jem said, with grim pragmatism. A rapid clack of heels sounded outside the curtain, and she looked past Rosie with obvious trepidation. The curtain was whipped aside without ceremony, and Rosie clamped her mouth shut, aware that she was staring.
“What the bloody hell have you two been up to this time?” Harriet Lacey said, scanning the notes on Jem’s chart. “Has she had the mag sulf yet?” she called over her shoulder.
“Just drawing it up,” a nurse replied.
“Good. Fast as you can, please. Her gases are crap, and she usually responds well to that.” Harriet’s expression gave nothing away as she listened to Jem’s chest and cast an eye over the monitors.
“Please don’t…” Jem kicked with her feet, trying to sit up properly. “Don’t—I’m okay.” She started to cough, collapsing back against the pillow as sweat beaded on her hairline.
“Last resort, Jem,” Harriet said. “And we’re not there yet. Let’s see how you are after the magnesium and an hour or two on CPAP. Does that sound all right?”
Although Rosie had no idea what bargain had just been struck, some of the tension eased from Jem’s posture. The nurse connected a small IV bag to one of the lines and adjusted its flow.
“Lovely, thank you,” Harriet said. She slung her steth around her neck. “Goodness, Jem, you’re making my eyes water. Shall we get you into a gown while we set the CPAP up? Officer Jones?”
Rosie all but snapped to attention, supporting Jem as the nurse dispensed with preliminaries and cut Jem’s uniform away. The gown went on before her boots and trousers came off. Rosie tucked a blanket over Jem’s bare legs, mortified on her behalf, though Jem seemed resigned, or perhaps accustomed, to the indignity. The mild effort of moving knocked her sats again, and Harriet wasted no time placing a large plastic mask over her face, securing it with two thick straps, and activating the machine its hose was attached to.
“I’ll check your gases again in an hour and we’ll go from there,” she said as the machine began to work in synch with Jem’s breathing. “I think CPAP warrants a call to your parents, don’t you?”
The mask precluded any debate on the subject, but Jem showed no sign of dissent. Harriet pulled her mobile from her pocket, checking the monitors again as she did so. “Your sats are already ninety-one. Why don’t you shut your eyes for a while so you don’t scare the pants off your dad when he gets here?” She wrote a note on Jem’s chart, waiting until Jem had slipped into a doze before she went over to Rosie. “Sit down before you fall down, and stick your tongue out for me,” she told her, attaching a probe to Rosie’s finger.
The adrenaline rush that had seen Rosie through the last couple of hours seemed to abandon her abruptly. Too bewildered to protest, she followed the instructions, her backside hitting the chair hard as her legs folded beneath her.
“Lower your head.” Harriet placed a hand between Rosie’s shoulder blades. “It’ll pass.”
“Will she be okay?” Rosie mumbled, studying her boots as they blurred and sharpened again. “And what’s CPAP?” She felt like an infant, full of questions but only capable of articulating them in the simplest terms.
Harriet squatted at Rosie’s side, no mean feat in the heels she was wearing. “I think she’ll be fine. She tends to bounce back quite quickly, even when she’s come in this poorly. Knowing her, she’ll probably get a HDU bed for the night and be well enough to go home in another day or so.”
“Really?” Rosie pushed upright, struggling to reconcile Harriet’s optimism with Jem’s current condition. “What does the mask do?”
“It stops her from getting exhausted, and it prevents her airways collapsing as she breathes.”
“In a nutshell?” Rosie said, suspecting there was a lot more to it than that.
Harriet smiled, graciously conceding the point. “Yes, in a nutshell. Now”—she pulled a small trolley closer and uncapped a nasty little needle—“I’m going to run your blood gases. Once I’m sure you don’t need to be in the cubicle next door, I’ll get someone to examine whatever you’re hiding beneath that rather grim scrag of carpet.”
“It’s curtain,” Rosie said, still eyeing the needle. “And it’s just a scratch.”
“Mm-hm. Am I correct in assuming you’d like to stay in here with Jem?”
“Yes.”
Harriet turned Rosie’s uninjured wrist, evidently preparing to draw the blood sample, but instead of jabbing it she held it in her hand. “Let us do what we need to do, then. She’ll probably be asleep for an hour or so. You can have a shower and get changed and still be here when she wakes up. How does that sound?”
“It sounds good,” Rosie admitted.
“Excellent.” Harriet shifted her fingers, feeling for the pulse at Rosie’s wrist and readying the needle. “Brace yourself, Officer Jones. I’ve been told this stings quite a bit.”
* * *
In Rosie’s experience, the best police partnerships were formed around the basic mandate of always having your mate’s back. When she’d messaged Kash to ask for clean clothes, he’d gone beyond the call and brought her fresh underwear and a flask of his mum’s curry as well.
“The foil has chapattis in it,” he said. “Take it home if you don’t feel like it now.”
“I will. Thanks, Kash.”
“How is she?” Never comfortable around the ill, injured, or dead, he had retreated to the foot of Jem’s bed.
Rosie stroked her thumb across the back of Jem’s hand. She didn’t think they were at the hand-holding stage yet—hell, they hadn’t even arranged their date—but the last time Jem had woken, she’d wrapped her fingers around Rosie’s and promptly fallen back to sleep. Rosie hadn’t dared to move since.
“Stable at the last count,” she said, refocusing on Kash’s question. “Her doc said her gases have improved, whatever that means, and they’ve started to wean her off that mask. Her dad’s got his hands full with a new pair of foster children, but he’s going to come as soon as he can.”
Kash plucked up the courage to sit in the cubicle’s spare chair. “What about you?” he said, giving her a pointed look.
“I think I’m okay.” She knew better than to tell him she was fine—he would skewer that lie in a heartbeat—but she couldn’t describe the terror of hearing the flames creep closer, of feeling the heat on her skin and the quaking of the building, and she had no words for the helplessness she’d felt as she’d watched Jem slowly suffocate. Aiming for nonchalance, she swallowed a mouthful of tepid coffee, but the cup clipped the edge of the overbed table as she put it down. Kash handed her a wad of paper towels and said nothing.
“Have you heard anything about the girls?” she asked. “The sarge popped his head in a while back, but he didn’t have much of an update.”
“Only that they’re on the children’s ward with their families, and they won’t be interviewed until tomorrow morning at the earliest. Smoke inhalation, dehydration, and a badly sprained ankle. The elder one—Ava?—reckoned they’d been down there for about four days, but she refused to give any other specifics, and no one’s going to push them until Psych have completed an assessment.”
Rosie rubbed her sore eyes. She was so tired that the room kept spinning, but she was scared of what she might see if she went to sleep. “Were they
runaways?”
“Yes.” He paused to check a note he’d written. “Twenty-three days listed as missing and vulnerable. They’d fallen off the radar completely, not a sight nor sound of them reported to the Misper team. Detective Merritt has been informed because of the circumstantial similarities, but there’s nothing concrete to link them to the Kyle Parker case.”
Rosie nodded, mulling the information over. In the house there had been no time to connect the dots, but she could see a pattern taking shape now, and it kicked her lethargy into touch. “Someone’s tempting these kids off the street, aren’t they?” she said. “Promising them the world, until they step out of line and end up locked in a cellar.”
“It’s one possible theory,” he said, always the more circumspect member of their duo. “Has Detective Merritt been in touch?”
“Numerous times.” Rosie’s mobile vibrated whenever she moved it, reminding her she had yet another message from Steph. She’d spoken to her briefly and emphasised the lack of mobile reception in Resus.
Kash didn’t press the topic. “You’re a popular lass. Everyone’s been asking after you. I think Smiffy might’ve shed a couple of tears.”
“Fuck off. It was probably wind.” She wafted her free hand at him. “Get back home before Makeenah reports you as a misper.”
He stood and knuckled her cheek. “Don’t be a stranger.”
“I won’t. I’ll text you. Tell your mum thanks for the curry.”
He was almost to the edge of the bay when she called him back.
“What’s up?” he said.
“The fire—” She shook her head at her own stupidity. She was so addled, she hadn’t even thought to ask. “Do they know how it started?”
His expression hardened. She’d seen him punch a wall once, and he’d looked more placid then than he did now. “Early indications suggest petrol,” he said as if reading from a formal report. “Poured through the letterbox at the front and thrown through the window you’d smashed in the kitchen. Major Crimes are treating it as arson and attempted murder.”
“Jesus.” She’d known that, somewhere at the back of her battered brain, but it was appalling to have her suspicions confirmed. Perhaps that was why she hadn’t asked.
“We’ll get the fuckers,” he said. “Most of Major Crimes are working it, and loads of our lot volunteered for the overtime.”
“Is that why I’m so popular?” she said. It was easier to make a joke than stew over what she’d just been told. “Everyone’s getting double bubble because of me.”
He laughed. “You might be on to something there. Give Jem some of that curry when she wakes up. It’ll clear her sinuses right out.”
“I have no doubt of that.” Rosie had encountered his mum’s curries on numerous occasions, and none of them had stinted on the spice. “But I’m not sure her doc will approve. I’ll see you soon, mate.”
Jem stirred as he left, lifting her head and rubbing at a crick in her neck. It would have been such a normal gesture, had her hand not been trailing a couple of IV lines. She mimicked writing something, and Rosie gave her the pad and pen Harriet had provided.
You look worn out, Jem scrawled in a wavering script. You don’t have to stay.
“I know I don’t,” Rosie said. “But you’re no trouble, so I thought I’d keep an eye on you until your dad gets here.”
I’m sorry, Rosie. For all of this, Jem wrote slowly, her hand trembling.
“Hey,” Rosie said. “There’s nothing you need to apologise for.”
Jem tapped the pad with the pen as if about to disagree, but then touched the bandage covering Rosie’s forearm instead. How many stitches?
“Thirteen.” Rosie chuckled as Jem drew a shocked face. “Yeah, I think she added an extra one for irony’s sake.”
Jem took too deep a breath and started coughing, setting off a chain reaction of pressure sensors on the CPAP. Bloody thing, she wrote. How’re my sats?
The monitor was out of sight behind her. Rosie spent a couple of seconds pretending to analyse it so Jem wouldn’t guess how closely she’d been keeping tabs. By this stage, she could have provided a detailed graph broken down into half-minute increments and featuring all the occasions where Jem had got lazy, dipped below eighty-five percent, and given Rosie a bout of palpitations.
“Hovering around ninety-four, occasionally peaking at ninety-five,” she said. “You’re officially cooking on gas, Ms. Pardon.”
Jem made an okay sign. I could murder a brew.
“I bet you could. Shall I see if your doc—” Rosie broke off when she saw Harriet approaching the cubicle. “Holy shit. Did I summon her?” she whispered, and Jem spluttered a laugh.
OW, she scribbled, her hand splinting her overworked ribs.
“Sorry.” Rosie pulled at her scrubs top until its creases disappeared, and hid her filthy socks beneath a blanket. Harriet had extended her shift to oversee Jem’s treatment, but she didn’t have a hair out of place, and every time she walked in she brought with her the scent of fresh strawberries.
“You look perkier,” she said, setting her steth on Jem’s chest. “Try not to cough. I like having eardrums.” She sat on the bed when she’d finished and read through the latest obs. “You’re still tight on your left side, but I want to try you on nasal O2 and nebs and see if we can keep your sats where they are. Do you feel up to that?”
Jem wrote YES and underlined it.
“Good,” Harriet said. “Give me ten minutes to get everything written up.”
She was back in five, armed with a lidded beaker of tea and a packet of biscuits.
“You know it’ll feel weird, so don’t panic,” she said, uncoupling the straps and easing the mask from Jem’s face. She placed a thin plastic tube below Jem’s nose and adjusted its flow of oxygen, her eyes never leaving Jem as she did so. Rosie inched forward in her seat, waiting for something terrible to happen, for Jem to turn blue or start gasping or lose consciousness, but Jem took a few deliberate breaths and then held out her hand for the brew.
“It’s as if we’ve done this before,” Harriet said, tilting the beaker for Jem to take a sip.
“Uncanny, isn’t it?” Jem’s reply was rough and scratchy, as if someone had sandpapered her vocal cords. “Thanks, Harriet.”
“My pleasure. You’re doing really well. There’s no HDU bed for you at the moment, but at this rate we’ll be able to admit you onto Respiratory instead.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Harriet smiled. “I thought so. Keep up the good work, and I’ll see you in half an hour.”
Jem waited for Harriet to leave and then drank more of the tea unaided. She frowned at the layer of soot she was smearing on the plastic. “Do I look like a chimney sweep?” she asked.
“You are slightly smudged in places,” Rosie admitted. “Do you want me to cadge some soap and a flannel?”
“You’re not giving me a bloody bed-bath, Rosie Jones.”
Rosie laughed, a proper carefree laugh that rolled in her belly and made her feel seven feet tall. “Would you rather that agency nurse with the mad moustache and the twitch did it?”
“Good Lord, no.” Jem closed her eyes. “All right. Go and find the stuff before I change my mind.”
* * *
The staff on the respiratory ward greeted Jem like a family friend, assigning her to a side room and turning a blind eye to the hoodie-wearing, barefoot bobby who’d accompanied her from A&E. Katya, her named nurse, found tomato soup and picnic boxes from somewhere, and then returned halfway through their supper with Jem’s dad.
Jem dropped her sandwich as he entered the room. She thought she’d stuck a reasonably firm lid on the evening’s events, until she burst into tears and fell forward into his arms.
“Shush now, Jemima. Shush,” he murmured against her cheek, but his hold on her was fierce, and she knew he was crying as well. She wrapped her fists in his rain-damp jacket and listened as the thrum of his heartbeat became slower and more regular.
He pulled away at length and dabbed her eyes with his hanky. “There you go. No more tears, love.”
“I didn’t mean to scare you, Dad. I’m really sorry. We found these girls, and someone set the house on fire…” She paused to let her lungs catch up. “And this is Rosie. She broke a window and got us all out.”
If her dad recognised Rosie’s name, he didn’t let on. He stood to shake her hand in both of his. “Pete Pardon. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Jem was lucky to have you there today.”
“I think we were all lucky,” Rosie said. She didn’t elaborate. Earlier she’d used Kash’s update to fill in the blanks for Jem, but with the trauma still so recent and raw, neither of them had wanted to dwell on the details.
Jem’s dad had never liked making anyone feel uncomfortable. He returned to his seat and pulled a tin from a plastic bag, flipping the lid and displaying the contents like a pirate with a chest full of treasure. Even with the stream of oxygen beneath her nose, Jem caught the scent of chocolate and butter.
“Your mum baked these for you,” he said.
“Aztec biscuits?” Jem’s guess was confirmed when she spied the pieces of cornflakes. She offered Rosie first pick. “I’ve not had these in ages. Mum would make them for me whenever I landed in the hospital.”
Her dad chuckled. “I should’ve bought shares in Kellogg’s. Jem was single-handedly keeping the buggers in business.”
“They’re really good,” Rosie said through a mouthful, her hand catching crumbs. “Can I leave my butty and have these instead? That’s okay, isn’t it? We’ve had a very stressful day.”
“Just this once,” Jem’s dad said. “Ferg was all for hopping on the next train when I spoke to him, but I persuaded him to stay put and give his presentation.”
“Thank you,” Jem said. Knowing how much preparation Ferg had put in for the event, she hadn’t wanted to tell him what had happened, but neither had she wanted him to read about it in the paper. “I’ll text him later and make sure he’s not on the sleeper express.”