Driftwood

by Harper Fox

  Covering his shoulders with the rug, Flynn said suddenly, as if following Tom’s thoughts, “Tell me Rob did not do this to you.”

  “What?” The question called him back from a great and increasing distance. He was stupid, he supposed. It hadn’t occurred to him. Wasn’t occurring now. “No. Of course not. Wasn’t his truck. Listen. I’m sorry, Flynn. What I said to you about him… Didn’t mean to hurt you.” That was it, though. Something about Tremaine, and the Sea Kings. Don’t fly with him. He had to say it, but the shuddering was boiling up in him again, his body’s hopeless reflex to tear itself out of the trap. “Flynn, don’t—”

  “No. Stay still.” Flynn crouched low, reached over the wheel arch and grabbed him. “Got to stay still. Come on, Doc, you know this stuff. Ssh.” Tom wondered if his face was intact. He hoped so. Flynn was kissing blood and rainwater off it, holding him down. “I’ve got you. Keep still.” He stroked his hair, and Tom used a last access of strength to reach up for him. “That’s it. Hang on to me.”

  A time passed. At first Tom listened for sirens, then he lost that thread and began to track the rhythmic warmth of Flynn’s breath, coming and going against his cheek. So much had happened, hadn’t it? This man’s irruption into his life, an unexpected daybreak. Then night coming down again, so hard it had almost consumed him. And yet Flynn was here with him. The strangeness of that drifted over Tom’s mind like cobwebs, or the dandelion fluff he could see catching on the wet cotton of Flynn’s T-shirt. “How… How did you find me?”

  A quiver of fraught laughter went through Flynn. “Oh, well… Remember how I bumped into you by chance at the quoit the other day? It only took me three goes. I reckoned it was worth another try.”

  “Oh great. My beautiful stalker. Did you…?”

  “Tom. Hush a minute.”

  Tom fell silent. A new tension had seized the lean shoulders he was holding. Tom felt him inhale—took a diagnostic breath himself, of the sharpened petrol tang in the air. “What is it?”

  “Not sure. I…” He paused, absolutely still. Listening. And Tom heard it too. A trickling sound, and then a soft and utterly unique thump. “All right. Got to get you out.”

  “Thought you said I had to stay still.”

  “That was then, sunbeam.”

  Tom waited. There was one last moment of uncertainty, terminated by the hiss of spilled fuel igniting. “Oh, you’re kidding. A spark? In this bloody weather?”

  “Yeah. Shit out of luck today, aren’t you, Doc? Don’t worry.” Flynn braced his shoulder into the distorted shield frame and got a hand beneath the steering column. “Got to lift this a bit. Can you push?”

  His contribution would be token at best, but he appreciated Flynn’s effort to distract him. Then he understood why he had made it. “No. Flynn. Get out.”

  “In a minute.”

  “No. Now. The tank’s gonna go up.”

  “Push up from under the wheel. Come on, Tom.”

  I filled her up yesterday. Full load; cost me a fortune. She’ll blow like a culvert bomb. “Flynn, fuck off out of here,” he rasped, trying to shove him away. But he was too weak, the pain occasioned by his movement too unmanning, and he fell back. Something in him still was capable of admiration, of aesthetic response—God, the sight of Flynn, every muscle in his lean tanned arms corded and standing, shoulders straining against the frame… No, don’t die here. You’re too damn lovely.

  But he was tough as whipcord too, wasn’t he? Flynn hauled deadweight bodies out of freezing water and into rescue baskets for a living. By contrast with a heaving Atlantic storm, Tom supposed the fire starting up in the back of the truck might not seem to him that much of a threat. He watched him lock a grip beneath the Rover’s crushed dashboard, pulled until Tom thought he could hear ligaments tearing down his spine. Something in the wheel housing cracked. He got an inch, got a couple, and then it would do. Grabbed Tom by the armpits and dragged him out of the wreck.

  They ran. Not far, but far enough. Tom knew a moment’s wild elation. He was whole, his legs beneath him numb but working. He was running with Flynn, back on Porth beach, outrunning the ninth wave. Nothing could catch them. When Flynn tackled him to the turf, it felt like brief flight, a cliff dive. He did not see or hear the truck explode, experienced the blast as a jolt through Flynn’s body where it lay over his, a warm unflinching shield.

  Days passed in flickering shadows. Their airless antiseptic heat was so familiar to Tom that he did not question it, and simply dreamed himself making his rounds in the ICU, dispassionately looking down on his own bruised flesh laid out on the hospital bed. He borrowed the voices of his colleagues, of Mike Findlay, making diagnosis, trying to reassure the dishevelled young RNAS airman sitting by his bed that he would live. Don’t worry. There was some swelling on his brain, some pressure, but it’s coming down. He’ll wake up soon.

  I should never have moved him.

  If you hadn’t, he’d be in more bits than that clapped-out truck of his. Is someone looking after his dog?

  Yes. Victor Travers collected her and took her home.

  You should go and get some rest. He really will be okay. Broken collarbone, bad bruising to his pelvis and legs. God knows how he got away with it. You saved his life.

  I’d rather stay here, if I can.

  A warm hand, closing around his. It opened a gate, let him back into himself, and he slept.

  Many voices. Nearing surface, Tom began to reach for them, but his throat was numb, his limbs drugged and heavy. Some of them surprised him. Vic Travers, his Porth Bay burr breaking up into rough fragments. Then Florence: Now, Victor! You heard what the doctor said. Don’t you go upsetting yourself, or we’ll have you poorly too, and he just got you better, didn’t he?

  Mike Findlay, of course, talking to him as if it were an ordinary day, which was the right approach with coma patients. Tom approved, and flickered him a smile which made him exclaim and check the monitors. Did you see that, Lieutenant? Not long now.

  Lieutenant… That meant Flynn. Flynn’s voice flowed round him like sunlight. He waited for it, followed it. It rose and fell like the sun, arcing across his day. It told him ordinary things—that it was raining again, that Belle was eating Florence Travers out of house and home. It told him things that made his heart rate pick up, made him struggle to find his way back, striking up through the water. He had not known he could be loved. The warm hand gripped his. His waking skin felt the brush of a kiss to his cheek. Come on, Tom. Please.

  The next time he heard the voice, the sunlight was gone from it. It was a flat black snap, a wolf’s growl. Rob, get out. I don’t want you in here.

  Why? I’m here for your own good, lover-boy. You miss any more shifts, you’re gonna get busted.

  I’m taking leave. Seriously, Rob. I’ll call security.

  Nobody has this much leave. And I got you that job. Don’t you dare piss it away.

  I know everything you got me. I’ll always be grateful. But you have to let me go.

  A silence, deep enough to drown in.

  I love him, Rob. You have to let me go.

  Chapter Eight: Storm

  Summer gale, banging like fists off the window. A westerly, it would be heaping wave crests high off the peninsula, and something in this half-dream, half-vision broke Tom’s trance, brought him bolt upright in the hospital bed, tearing drip lines from his arm and making the EKG squeal. Pain lanced through his shoulder, then through every other part of him, and he sat gasping, lost, staring at the night-black window where the storm roared and rattled the glass.

  The door flew open, admitting Mike Findlay, his face set in a grim, life-saving mask Tom knew well. As he watched, it transitioned to a broad smile. “Ah, finally, your lordship.” Stepping back, he shouted down the corridor, “It’s okay. He’s just unplugged himself. Right, you. Stay still and let me see to you.”

  “Why am I in here? Why am I not on the ward, like anybody…?” His throat seized. Must’ve been intubated, he thought,
dazedly, gratefully swallowing the water Mike passed him. “…anybody else?”

  “Coma patients depress people, especially if they’re doctors. Bad advert for the NHS. We decided to hide you.”

  “Oh. Ta.” Tom subsided against the pillows Mike had propped behind his back. “Coma patient, though? I wasn’t…”

  “No, you were just sound asleep for five days, scaring the crap out of everyone. You’ve had a stream of visitors, you know. And as for that poor lad from Hawke Lake…”

  “Flynn? Is he all right? Where is he?”

  “Don’t begrudge him a night off.” Mike finished listening to his chest and began shining diagnostic lights into his eyes. The room seemed full of people now—nurses turning down the sheet, checking the dressings on his legs, the tight strapping round his shoulder. “He’s been here day in, day out. Couldn’t get him to leave. Seemed to think you were in some kind of danger, though he wouldn’t say what.” Mike’s eyes met his, bright with suppressed amusement. “Looks like you’ve got a friend there. About time, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “Mike, shut up.” Tom felt colour flood into his face—and then, just as quickly, felt it drain. “Weather sounds bad. Are the rescue choppers out?”

  “Don’t know. The lifeboat got a callout, I heard, and that other bloke from Hawke—Tremaine, is it?—came by to pick your Flynn up, so maybe they’re expecting a bad night.” Mike smiled. “You awkward bastard. Trust you to wake up now, after the poor sod sat here watching you sleep for five days.”

  I woke up because I heard the storm, and I was afraid.

  Alone once more in his private room, Tom stared at the night-black glass, which gave him back only his own pale reflection. Five days on a drip had hollowed his face, put shadows under his eyes. A dragging weakness pulled at him. He knew how quickly coma patients lost muscle tone and was glad it hadn’t been any longer.

  He checked the bank of monitors beside the bed. He didn’t seem to be hooked up to any of them anymore. Mike had taken the adhesive electrode pads from his chest, leaving pink circles. He had broken his collarbone, but cleanly, and it had been reset. When he sat forward, testing the elasticity of the bandaging round his shoulder and rib cage, he found that he was firmly held in place, and the pain, although startling, was bearable. He could function, would not pass out on the floor and lose this endeavour before he started it.

  Not from that, anyway. Tom had somehow forgotten that he’d overturned his Land Rover at fifty and been dragged out from the wreckage. Before it exploded. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he buried his face in his hands. Flynn had stayed with him. Flynn would have stayed—through the blast and beyond. Parting unsteady fingers, Tom stared through them at the black-bruised strips of flesh which were as much of his thighs as he could see between the edge of his hospital gown and the place where the bandaging started. Dear God, Flynn would have stayed. Tom wasn’t sure if his legs would take his weight, but there was nothing broken, and they had to. He had to get out.

  Mike Findlay would stop him, if he knew. Tom reckoned he probably had ten minutes to make good his escape—he wouldn’t be left any longer, not with that efficient soul on shift. Well, the benefit of working in a hospital was knowing its rhythms and side routes. Quickly, not letting himself think about what he was doing, Tom pushed himself upright and stumbled to the door.

  The corridor was quiet. A silent barefoot crossing on the lino brought him to the fire stairs. Their concrete chill on the soles of his feet was a welcome distraction. Walking felt like struggling uphill through waist-high shale, and he clung to the banister, padding downward one step at a time. The gale battered its wings against the window here too, bringing with it a rattle of rain, reinforcing his purpose. In the locker room on the next floor down he had a change of clothes, a spare set he could fall back on in case of blood or vomit. A pair of running shoes too, he thought. A jacket he could wear to the gym or the pool. Yes, he could pull this off. He even kept a spare bloody cashpoint card in his locker, for what emergency he’d never been able to imagine, but he finally had reason to be glad of his neurosis-fuelled duplication of resources.

  By the time he had crept into the locker room, got the clothes out of his locker and pulled them on over his bandages, he was about ready to fold up and weep with the pain. What the fuck was he doing? Flynn was probably fine. Rob had come to take him back to Hawke, that was all. They’d need him in one way or another, on a night like this. If Tom was that worried, all he had to do was find Mike and ask him for help.

  Yes, right. I need you to make sure Lieutenant Summers doesn’t fall into the hands of his violent, possibly homicidal ex, on this night of black tempest. Explain to him. Extract him somehow from Rob Tremaine’s brutal enchantment. Don’t let him fly…

  A time passed, of walking and pain, of pain concealed in the best casual walk he could manage. He made his way out of the hospital via supply and admin corridors, deserted at this hour, and found himself swaying, grabbing at a wall for support, in the alley that ran behind the main block. The wind immediately caught him, rain stinging into his face. Running his hands across his hair, Tom straightened up and tried to look like an ordinary, unremarkable man, in search of a cashpoint in the Penzance streets. Ordinary men did such things—they ran out of cigarettes or booze and went out, even after midnight in a storm, to get some money and go to the off-licence or the promenade’s one enterprising twenty-four-hour shop. Tom could be one of those men, no bother.

  He made it to the Lloyds just off the seafront, then stopped a taxi disgorging a handful of revellers into the wind-whipped night. Bunny ears and tiny skirts… Tom had no idea what day it was, but assumed a Friday or Saturday. Good, the pub in Breagh would be making the most of its new extended licence. No point in trying to scale the walls of Hawke Lake. The bartender in the Fox, unobtrusive eyes and ears, would tell him what was going on. He got into the cab—a little too casually, the movement nearly made him faint—and he sat in clench-jawed silence for ten seconds before he was able to speak, the cabbie eyeing him warily in the rearview mirror. “Can you take me up to Breagh village, please?”

  I love him, Rob.

  Not a dream. Tom had learned, and taught younger doctors, that coma patients often retained hearing, and therefore to mind what they said at the bedside. Staring out through the rain-smeared glass, each speed bump and pothole sending high-voltage flashes of pain down his spine, Tom hung on to the door handle and smiled.

  Half an hour later, he stood in the middle of the road outside the Fox in Breagh village. He was quite alone and unobserved. The pub had been near empty when he had paid the cabbie and stumbled in. Should have asked him to wait, he supposed, but he hadn’t been thinking. The bartender, wearily mopping countertops, had told him that most of Hawke’s personnel had been called back to the base on standby. They had one rescue chopper down with mechanical problems, the two others out already on separate emergency calls to fishing boats caught in this storm, which had roared up out of nowhere, barely registering on charts before it was ripping sky and sea to shreds. The ASaC lads had been called in too. The bartender supposed he shouldn’t be telling Tom this, but there was word of a big trafficking run, arms dealers risking all to hide behind the storm and get a shipment through. A bad night, it was going to be. Would Tom like a drink before he closed the shop?

  No. Absolute sobriety, forever. Tom remembered, in a weird flash, laying down that law for himself before leaving the house on a wet morning five days ago. Before the road, the mist, blazing headlights rearing up at him. He had not expected such challenge to come so soon. This was how it would be, to love a man like Flynn. A man who leapt into the storm, who would never be grounded or tamed. Never be safe… How fucking sweet it would be, to knock back a treble, buy the bottle, find his way home somehow and leave the night to take care of itself. No one would be any less dead or alive in the morning for his contribution.

  Nevertheless he turned and walked away. As soon as he closed the pub door, t
he gale hit him, pushing him unresisting out into the deserted street. He heard a key turn in the lock behind him. He was soaked to the skin inside thirty seconds. As he stood swaying, trying not to drop to his knees on the tarmac, he heard the thud of rotor blades. He looked up. Briefly the night was lit by the flying-whale shape of a Sea King, a darkness on darkness, picked out by the red and green flicker of her running lights. Rescue or tactical? Tom couldn’t tell. The sound of the spinning blades merged into the wind and was gone.

  He turned, disoriented, at another engine’s roar. Earthbound, this one, accompanied by a pair of flickering, unreliable headlights. Tom began to move towards the kerb, wondering if he would be quick enough. Each step now felt like dragging lead weights upstairs. He wondered who had run him off the Lanyon road. Why the driver hadn’t stopped, and if, as now seemed likely, he was coming back to have another go.

  Tyres squealed on the wet road. Blinking, shading his eyes from the uncertain glare, Tom saw a battered Ford van pull up next to him. The door swung open and Victor Travers scrambled out. “Thomas bloody Penrose,” he greeted him, grinning. “Thank God for that. Doc Findlay wanted to call out air-sea rescue, but they’re all busy, so you got me. What the devil are you doing here?”

  Tom didn’t resist Victor’s large and comprehensive grasp on him. The passenger seat of the Ford felt like a welcoming mattress. If he closed his eyes… “How… How did you know where to find me?”

  “Didn’t. This road’s just on my beat. Your other friends and neighbours are out cross-quartering the rest of the countryside. Come on, let’s get you back.”

  “Wait a second, Vic.” Tom hesitated, distracted. Did he have friends and neighbours? Of the sort, anyway, who would turn out after midnight in a storm to find him? “Please. Don’t drag me back to the hospital. Call Mike and tell him I’m safe, to call off the search, but…”

  Victor eyed him. It occurred to Tom that his friend could be forgiven for jumping to a conclusion, finding him like this just after closing outside the only pub in a five-mile radius. But all Vic said was, “What’s the matter? I know all the choppers are out tonight. You worried about Flynn?”