by Sarah Webb
Tears stream down Bailey’s face. “It w-wasn’t my f-f-fault,” he mouths. Then he says it louder: “It w-wasn’t my f-f-fault. It wasn’t my f-fault. IT WASN’T MY F-FAULT!” His words rattle out like machine-gun fire, getting louder and louder.
“That’s right, Bailey.” Mum smiles through her own tears. “Let it all out.” Then she hugs him before going on in a low, firm voice: “Now you listen to me, Bailey Otis, and you listen to me good: everyone has their own cross to bear. I lost my mum a few years back, and I thought I’d fall apart. Then my marriage ended, and I did go to pieces. But I got through it, and now things are good. Life isn’t easy for anyone, but you have to stick in there, ride the bad times out, and wait for the good ones to come. Because there will be good times. You’re only a teenager. You have your whole life ahead of you. So get out of the water, young man. Right now! Or we’re all going to die of hypothermia — because we’re not leaving you, Bailey.”
He shakes his head, his lips mashed together, tears still rolling down his cheeks. “I c-c-c-an’t,” he says. “I think I’m f-f-f-frozen solid.”
“I’ll help,” Seth says. “Let me carry you.”
Bailey closes his eyes and then slowly opens them again. “OK,” he whispers.
“Thank God,” Mum says. “Now everyone out, quickly.”
Seth sweeps Bailey into his arms and, helped by the buoyancy of the water, carries him to the shore. Mum holds my hand, and we pull each other through the waves.
On the beach Seth puts Bailey down gently. Bailey immediately huddles in a ball, shivering violently. It’s not surprising — he’s wearing a pair of board shorts and nothing else, and from the waxiness of his skin, it’s obvious he’s been in the water for far too long.
“Should I ring an ambulance?” I ask Mum.
“Yes,” she says. “Tell them it’s urgent. We need to warm him up now, though, or he may have a heart attack from the cold.”
I dial with wet, shaking fingers.
“Emergency services,” a calm female voice says. “How can I help?”
“We need an ambulance. It’s urgent. It’s my friend. We found him in the sea, and he has severe hypothermia. His whole body’s rigid, and his lips are blue.”
“Breathing?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll send out an ambulance immediately. Where are you?”
After I give her the details, she says, “Caller, I’m ringing it through now. Please hold the line.” Seconds later she’s back. “They’re on their way. In the meantime, you must try to keep him warm. But nothing sudden, understand? Keep your phone on and call us if there’s any change. We’ll be there in about ten minutes.”
I click off the call. “They’re on their way. The woman said to keep him warm.”
Mum has already put my jacket over Bailey’s chest and is rubbing his face gently with her hands.
At that moment, Mills appears. “What’s happening?” she asks, crouching down beside Bailey. “Why is he that horrible color? Bailey, are you all right? Can you hear me? Oh, what’s wrong with him?” She puts her hand over her mouth, and tears spring to her eyes.
Mum says, “Mills, listen to me. It’s important. You are the only warm person here. And we need your dry clothes.”
“But Bailey—” Mills says, her face crumpling.
“Concentrate, Mills,” Mum says. “You’re going to lie down and press your skin against Bailey’s back. We’ll layer all the dry clothes over the pair of you. The rest of us are wet and cold from the water — your body heat might just keep him alive. Seth, you’re going to sandwich him. I need you to run around and get as warm as you can.”
Seth starts doing jumping jacks and squats to warm up.
Mills’s face is a picture. “Do you mean all my clothes?”
“Mills, just get on with it,” I say. “Leave your bra and knickers on. No one’s looking.”
“I a-a-am.” Bailey manages to give a tiny smile — even though his breathing is ragged and his face is so pale, it’s practically translucent.
Reluctantly, Mills strips down. Then under Mum’s direction, Seth moves Bailey onto his side.
“Mills, quickly now,” Mum says. “Lie down against Bailey’s back and push your body hard against his skin.”
Mills nods and lies down on the pebbles, wiggling her body forward until as much of her as possible is pressing against his back.
“Holy moly, he’s an iceberg,” she says.
“That’s why he needs your warmth,” Mum says patiently.
Seth rolls his eyes at me. I know he finds Mills a bit ditzy sometimes.
“Hang in there, Bailey,” Mills whispers. She wraps her arms around him.
Mum turns to Seth. “You warm now?” she asks him.
He nods.
“Good. Press your back right up against Bailey’s chest. And then we just have to wait for the paramedics.”
As Mum and I cover the three of them with all the dry clothes, a woman in a silk headscarf stops beside us. “Everything all right here?” she asks, her eyes sweeping over the huddle of bodies.
“The lad in the middle has hypothermia,” Mum explains. “Spent too long in the water. Ambulance is on its way.”
The woman takes off her green puffer jacket and hands it to Mum. “Here, put this over them. Howard!” she shouts at a man holding a chocolate Labrador by its lead near by. “We need your jacket.”
He hands it over, and Mum layers the jackets on top of Mills, Bailey, and Seth. The couple sits down on the pebbles and waits for the ambulance with us.
“Do you know the boy?” the woman asks Mum.
“Yes — he’s my daughter’s friend. He was surfing without a wet suit.”
The woman nods. She seems happy with this explanation. But if it was as simple as that, then why didn’t Bailey leave the water as soon as he started to get cold? I exchange a look with Mum, and she gives me a gentle smile. “It’s going to be all right, Amy,” she says softly, seeming to read my mind for the second time today. “Bailey’s going to get the help he needs.” She doesn’t have to say any more. I can tell by her expression that she understands my concern.
After a few minutes, Mum asks Mills, “Does he feel any warmer?”
Mills nods. “I think so, but he’s very still. Is he asleep?”
Mum peers down at Bailey and says, “Bailey? Bailey?”
Nothing.
“Bailey?” She shakes his shoulder. “Bailey?”
Still nothing.
Swearing under her breath, she presses his cheek with her hand; her fingertips leave white imprints in his gray skin. “Bailey, can you hear me?” she says loudly. “You have to stay awake.”
“Come on, buddy,” Seth says. “Wake up.”
Bailey gives a low moan. His eyelids flicker but don’t open.
There’s a shout from farther up the beach, and, looking up, I see that two men and a woman are running toward us. The two men are carrying a stretcher between them.
“How’s he doing?” one of the men asks Mum as the other two paramedics crouch down beside Bailey to examine him: one checks his pulse, the other his body temperature. Seth and Mills are still sandwiching him. Mills’s cheeks have turned bright red, and I can tell she’s not looking forward to standing up half-naked in front of all these strangers.
“Not so good,” Mum says. “He’s just about conscious. We tried to warm him up as best we could.”
“You’ve all done a great job,” the woman says. “His core temperature is slowly rising. He’s not out of the danger zone yet, though. We’ll need to zip him into a survival bag and get him straight to the hospital.”
“It was mainly thanks to my mum,” I say proudly. “We just did what she said.”
“Well done,” the woman tells Mum. “Your quick thinking may just have saved this lad’s life.”
Mum blushes a little at the compliment. “I saw it on Casualty,” she admits with a shy smile.
Mum is fantastic on Monday too. Mil
ls’s mum, Sue, is adamant that Mills won’t be visiting Bailey in the hospital. She says that school is far too important to miss — but Mum somehow manages to talk her round. “Bailey really needs his friends at the moment,” I hear her telling Sue on the phone. “Yes, I know they could get the bus to Tallaght after school, but that would take hours, and I’m happy to drive them over today. I’ll drop them straight back to class afterward, I promise.”
And it works! Sue says Mills can go — but only for half an hour.
Dave’s been really sweet all morning too. It was as we were stacking the dishwasher together that I finally asked him what’s been on my mind since yesterday.
“Can people die from hypothermia? Dave, do you think Bailey did it on purpose?”
He nodded. “Unfortunately, yes. But people don’t usually try to end things by standing in the sea on a busy beach, Amy. It sounds more like a cry for help. I’m sure Bailey was hoping someone would find him, and knowing as he does now that he has friends he can rely on and who care about him will make a lot of difference.”
After breakfast, we pick up Seth (unlike Sue, Polly didn’t take any convincing), and Mum drives us all to Tallaght Hospital, where we find Bailey in one of the children’s wards: a bright, sunny room with cartoon characters painted on its yellow walls.
He’s sitting up in bed, listening to music through his headphones. He’s wearing a plain white T-shirt that makes his emerald eyes ping. (I bet he refused to wear pajamas or a hospital gown.) I realize I’ve only ever seen him in black before or in the Saint John’s uniform. He’s still vampire pale, but he looks a lot better than he did yesterday.
He takes off his headphones and drops them onto the bed beside him as we come in. “Hey,” he says, looking a bit embarrassed.
But if he’s embarrassed, then Mills is mortified: her cheeks are ruby red, and she can’t stop staring at her feet.
“This is my mum, Sylvie,” I say to Bailey. “She drove us over. You met yesterday.”
Bailey gives her a nod, his face reddening. “Mac’s in the café. He said he’d love to talk to you — to thank you — if . . .” He drops his eyes to the blue cotton blanket on the bed.
“I’ll go and join him,” Mum says, smiling gently at Bailey. “Leave you lot to catch up. I’ll be back in about twenty minutes, Amy, OK? Take care, Bailey,” she adds, putting her hand on his shoulder. “I hope I’ll see you again soon. You’re welcome at our place anytime.”
She walks out of the ward, and I stare after her, wondering if the fairies have whisked away my real mum and left this totally cool, understanding woman in her place. She’s been amazing over the last two days.
There’s silence. In an attempt to remove the awkwardness, I ask brightly: “How are you feeling, Bailey? Still shivering?”
Bailey shrugs. “Only on the inside.”
I have no idea what to say to that, but I’m grateful that his anger toward me seems to have dissolved in the seawater.
After a moment or two, he lifts his head and gives me a half-smile. “Sorry, Amy. I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.” And pushing himself up a little in the bed, he goes on: “Thanks for coming. All of you.”
He looks at Mills, who bites her lip nervously and then says, “We wanted to be here for you. We’re your friends.”
“I haven’t been much of a friend to any of you recently,” Bailey says. “And, Mills, for the record: I never really liked Annabelle — not the way I liked you. And it’s all over. I texted her this morning. I’m sorry for hurting you. Hey, I wrote you a song last night. To apologize, you know.”
Mills gives a little gasp. “Really?”
He nods. “I’ll sing it to you when I get out of here.”
I look from Bailey to Mills and back again. Mills is smiling delightedly. Is it really that simple for her? One song and everything’s hunky-dory? Seriously? Bailey behaved terribly.
Seth puts his hand on my arm. “Leave it,” he whispers. “It’s not the time.”
I nod at him. It’s enough that Seth understands. He knows how protective I am of Mills. Someone has to be. She’s such a big softie.
There’s silence again. So, me being me, I have to break it. “We’re all so sorry about everything that happened to you in the past, Bailey,” I say. “And about that stuff on the beach with Finn. You must have been hurting pretty bad to stand in freezing-cold water like that. I mean, you could have—”
“Amy!” Mills hisses. And even Seth is frowning at me.
“Sorry,” I murmur. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No, it’s OK,” Bailey says. “I’m sick of hiding things. I don’t know why I walked into the sea like that. It was weird; I wasn’t thinking straight. My mind was racing, and I guess I wanted to feel nothing: for my body and my mind to go numb. I wanted to stop thinking. But the colder my body got, the more my mind raced.”
“But you wanted someone to find you, right?” Mills asks quietly.
He stares down at the blue blanket over his legs. “Honestly?” And for a second, the whole ward seems deathly quiet. “Yes,” he says finally. “As soon as I heard Seth’s and Amy’s voices, I kind of snapped out of my trance. And then Amy’s mum—” He breaks off and swallows. “What she said really got to me. I mean you guys all cared enough to freeze your butts off in the Irish Sea, so I must be worth something.” He shrugs.
“Oh, Bailey, of course you’re worth something,” Mills says, her eyes filling with tears.
No one says anything else for a while until eventually Bailey says, “Do you ever wish you’d never been born?”
Mills looks shocked. “That’s a terrible thing to say.”
“No, it’s not. I feel like that sometimes,” I say gently. “It’s normal to feel a bit down every once in a while. When my mum and dad were fighting all the time, I felt pretty awful. And Seth’s been through a lot with Polly being sick and everything.”
I pause to check that Seth’s all right with what I’ve just said. He gives me a gentle smile, so I continue: “Bailey, here’s how I see it. You can carry on hiding from your past, running away from it, or you can look it in the face and say, ‘Yep, that happened to me, but I’m not going to let it ruin the rest of my life.’”
Bailey shakes his head. “You don’t know what I went through. You don’t know who I am.”
“Actually, I do,” I say gently. Our eyes lock; his are full of pain and anguish and worry and regret and fear — it frightens me. But I think he understands that I know everything — about Baby X and his mother — and that I’ll never tell Mills or Seth. Bailey will always carry a deep sadness in his heart — an everlasting scar — but hopefully he can learn to live with it. His eyes soften a little, and he gives me a tiny nod.
“Nothing’s changed, mate,” Seth says cheerfully, breaking the intense atmosphere. “You’re still the same old annoying Bailey Otis to us.”
We talk for a while longer until Bailey looks at the clock. “I have to go to this counselor woman at ten. They won’t let me out otherwise. It’s kind of lame . . .” He trails off.
“I went to one once,” Seth says, picking at the skin around his thumb. I look at him in surprise. “When Polly first got sick, I wasn’t doing so well,” he goes on. “The doctor found me someone to talk to. She was nice. It kinda helped. Talking to someone who wasn’t involved and didn’t know me from Adam.” He shrugs. “It can’t do any harm, and it might get you off some school, mate.”
“Guess so,” Bailey says.
I take a deep breath. Don’t do it, Amy, a little voice is telling me. But if I don’t say it now, I never will. And it’s important. “Bailey, you should talk to her about Finn. See what she thinks about you two meeting up.”
“Yeah, all right.” Bailey looks at me. He doesn’t seem angry, though, just a little tired.
“So you’ll think about it?” (I know, I know; I’m like a dog with a bone.)
Bailey shrugs. “Yes, Greenster. I’ll think about it, OK? Just
for you.” His voice is flat, but his eyes have brightened. There’s hope.
That evening Clover is practically glued to the sofa as I unfold the drama of the last two days.
“Siúcra ducra, Beans,” she says with a low whistle when I’ve finished telling her everything. “That’s quite the story. Poor old Bailey. I hope he feels stronger soon.” She breaks off and picks at a hangnail. “And if that wounded soldier can face his woolly mammoth-size demons, I don’t really have any excuse, do I, Bean Machine?”
“Cliona, you mean?”
She nods. “Exactement. And the bold Lucas Kendall. Especially Kendall. I have to face them both before I can move on. Visage to visage.”
“If it can wait till Wednesday afternoon, I’ll go to Trinity with you. Give you a bit of moral support.”
“Would you mind? Just thinking about it gives me the collywobbles, but I’m sick of hiding between lectures and missing out on all the college parties. Paddy keeps asking me to write for the mag using a pseudonym, and I hate turning him down. But either I write as Clover Wildgust, or I don’t write at all. I’m not hiding my identity for anyone. Plus the Trinity Ball’s on soon. Don’t want to be Cinderella, leaving when my spell wears off at midnight, now, do I?”
“Spell?”
She sighs. “Confidence spell. Every morning I stand in front of the mirror and tell myself that Cliona and Kendall won’t bother me — that today will be the day I’ll shimmer past them, cool as a Bacardi Breezer.”
“Does it work?”
“Never. But as I always say, life moves pretty fast: if I’m not careful, my college years will have whizzed right by me. No, it’s finally time to face my fears.”
Bailey still isn’t back in school by Wednesday. I haven’t heard from him, but he’s been in contact with Seth. Apparently, Bailey’s new counselor has suggested he take some time off to get his strength back. Physical strength or mental strength, I didn’t like to ask.
Mills is on cloud nine. Bailey has been texting her every day. She knows I don’t approve, but she says she has to tell someone or she’ll burst. I just hope he doesn’t trample on her heart again.