by M. T Hill
She looks harder.
No, not missing. Replaced.
There’s a small car parked where her shed should be.
‘Don’t,’ someone says.
Rolly is standing to her left. He looks boyish, almost lost. He says, ‘You mind coming back inside?’
Martha can hear something lowing. It brings to mind animal traps and sharp wire. Blood and fur. In her time here she’s watched Rolly skin roadkill, and dealt with it; part of learning the rural way. But occasionally, without telling anyone, Rolly will lay traps in the forest, and those she has never been able to deal with.
She doesn’t want to go back inside, no. Not now she’s noticed Greenley and Sharon standing around this car on her shed.
‘What happened?’ Martha asks Rolly.
He winces at her.
‘What?’
Still wincing.
‘Rolly.’
Rolly takes her sleeve and cups his mouth. ‘Someone in it.’
Now there’s this bright thread – she can see it, nearly – connecting her to the car. Reeling her in. The car is modern, electric and autonomous, and damaged beyond repair. There’s bodywork missing from its front wing, and its bonnet is fully concertinaed.
Rolly holds his face. Pale and sweaty. A sort of slime on his chin. Has he been sick?
‘I dunno what it’s about,’ Rolly says. ‘Greenley said to keep you back here.’
‘God’s sakes,’ Martha whispers. She sets off through the growing patches.
‘Hang about,’ Rolly says, coming after her. ‘There’s something else.’
Martha can see that for herself. The car windscreen is shattered, laminate film holding together the tiny fragments that cloud the interior. Both of the car’s doors are gull-winged open, with Sharon’s boots and backside protruding from the near side. Opposite Sharon, glimpses of Greenley’s creased brow, frantic hands.
Martha’s almost at the bonnet. This close, it’s obvious her shed has been demolished, its remains lifting the car clear from the ground. One of its front wheels is still spinning, electric motor whining at a low pitch. The smell of burnt coils catches in her throat.
‘Sharon!’ Greenley shouts. The moaning again, followed by a bout of groggy coughing. Greenley has a man’s head against his breast.
Martha comes round the car, behind Sharon, and Greenley finally spots her in the gap between Sharon’s hip and the car’s door frame.
‘Sharon,’ Greenley says, and signals to Martha.
Sharon looks over her shoulder. Slowly backs out of the car. Her face, when she stands, is twisted, embarrassed. In the seat she was covering is an old man wearing a camouflage jacket. Some of the old man’s face is missing – Martha can see his teeth through his cheek. It could be the shadow, but his right eye socket seems to have slipped down his face. A section of white hair is attached to a pink flap that hangs limply from his forehead.
‘Is that blood?’ Martha asks. Not the right question, necessarily, but all that comes to mind. A fizzy sensation in her mouth, like she’s going to be sick.
‘Get her out of here,’ Greenley hisses to Sharon. Then, shouting over the bonnet, ‘Rolly! What the hell are you doing? I told you to keep her back there—’
‘Is he dead?’ Martha asks Sharon. ‘Is that old man dead?’
Sharon takes Martha’s arm, turning her with it. She steps around and pulls Martha into her. Tobacco smoke and camphor. ‘I don’t want you seeing,’ she says.
‘How did he die?’
‘It’s, oh love…’
Martha looks back to see Greenley sawing at the injured man’s seat belt with his Swiss army knife. The injured man’s breathing really isn’t right. Something clogging the pipe.
The old man, the dead man, stares on at the occluded windscreen.
Then Greenley has cut the injured man free, and Sharon runs to assist. The men roll out of the car in their strange embrace, the injured man on top of Greenley.
Martha is frozen, watching it all unfold. The old man in the second seat is in full view now. A small gun, a pistol, is balanced on the peak of his knee. His hand a little lower down the thigh, like he’d rested the gun there to check his phone, or change the route, or explain something in gesture with two hands for clarity.
‘Martha! Hurry!’
This was Sharon. Martha snaps back and goes to her. Together they roll Greenley away from the injured man. The injured man is wearing a blue football shirt, dirty across the gut. He must be mid-forties, early fifties. There’s a stud of dry blood under his lower eyelid. His face is puffy, heavily scarred around its edges. His eyes are half-closed and rolling back. His left leg is bent the wrong way at the knee. When she leans close enough, she can make out the crest on his shirt’s breast. Two globes, a ribbon. Birmingham City FC.
‘The attack,’ Martha says. ‘You were in the attack.’
‘He’s slipping,’ Greenley says, waving his phone over the man’s neck and torso in some vain attempt to scan for ID, for an insurance derm. ‘Sharon, check his wrists, will you? I can’t find a thing.’
‘Rolly!’ Sharon screams. She starts squeezing along the man’s left wrist. Then the other. ‘Nothing in either,’ she says. ‘For heaven’s sake!’
Finally, Rolly comes running. He arrives the wrong side of the car, pointing at the dead man.
‘Why the fuck’s this old one dressed up like paramilitary?’
Martha steps away, unsure where to look. She has her hands at her sides, useless and awkward. Without the injured man’s derm, they can’t access the emergency services. Without a derm, he’s on his own. No one takes that kind of risk any more, or so she thought. And she should know: they’ve spent the last few months making sure everyone in the village is chipped.
‘We need to check for wounds,’ Greenley says.
‘Let me,’ Sharon tells him, and starts cutting at the football shirt with the Swiss army knife. The injured man’s skin is mottled. Unbroken skin, but a welting bruise on the ribs.
‘Internal bleeding,’ Greenley says, touching along the injured man’s abdomen. ‘Sharon, here – press here. That feel hard to you?’
Watching Sharon push her hand into the man’s side, Martha steps forward. ‘Pass me your phone,’ she says to Greenley.
Sharon and Greenley stare up at her.
‘Does it work?’ Martha says. ‘Because mine’s still knackered.’
Greenley blinks.
‘Phone,’ Martha says. ‘Just let me try.’
Greenley unlocks his phone and tosses it to her. Martha immediately pulls up Dr Abbas’s number. In three or four bells the doctor answers with an impatient rasp: ‘What the hell are you doing? I told you no more calls! I’ve paid up, damn you. We’re settled. Now piss off.’
Martha swallows. Probably it’s audible. She says, ‘It’s me again. The girl.’ The line’s breaking up and she’s watching Greenley and Sharon and Rolly as they work to sustain the man. The rustle of the trees and the man’s sticky breathing.
‘Where’s Greenley?’ Abbas says.
‘With a man,’ Martha tells him calmly. ‘He’s in a state.’
‘What man? What d’you mean, there’s a man?’
‘Messed up. A man. Two men crashed on the allotments. The car, I mean – it crashed. One’s dead, and the other has no derm.’
The line goes quiet. The doctor sniffs. ‘Are you in danger?’
Martha looks at the car. Wisps of smoke from the bonnet. Back to the injured man; his strange, scarred face. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘There’s a response from the injured man? Nothing obstructing his airway? You’ve checked his breathing?’
Martha snaps her fingers towards Greenley. Greenley looks up, surprised by her boldness. ‘Is he still breathing?’ Martha asks. Greenley nods tersely. ‘Yeah,’ Martha says. ‘He’s in and out. In and out, yeah. His breath is rattly.’
‘Okay,’ Abbas says, ‘then I’d like you to describe the patient’s injuries to me. Quick as you
can. Don’t overthink it – say what you see.’
Martha takes a breath. The patient. ‘Um… his left leg is twisted round at the knee. His foot’s the wrong way. I think there’s some bone poking out of his shin. He has these blotchy red bruises down one side. His face is messed up. He looks sore all over.’
‘Has he vomited blood?’
Martha squints at the man. He looks sort of unfinished – an impression of someone, a draft. ‘No,’ she tells Abbas.
‘But the bruising’s visible?’
‘Definitely. It looks like burns.’
‘So, I’d ask you not to move him. Don’t put him in the recovery position, nothing like that – we don’t want pooling.’
For the first time, the situation as a wave. The reality on her chest, with its own heft. A pressure builds behind Martha’s eyes, and her nose stings. When she blinks, the tears come. ‘Is he going to die?’ she stammers. In part because she’s never seen the transition up close, at least not so quickly, and the man’s face seems to Martha the colour of death. Before today, she’d never seen a body – and here is the prospect of two. They’d asked Martha if she wanted to see her mum’s body, the least bad outcome, given how her mum went peacefully in the end, owing to the way the cancer had breached her brain barrier. They’d said going to the chapel of rest was a useful way to say goodbye. Martha said she didn’t want to say bye. She told them she wanted to think her mum had only popped to the shops, or was reading a book in the next room, or was pottering in the garden, having a secret cigarette. Sometimes the cat would take a fledgling and her mum had to run outside to stop it – better to think of her doing that than lying on a steel sheet. ‘And it wasn’t peaceful at all,’ Martha had said. They hadn’t seen what came before.
Martha hadn’t gone to her mum’s funeral, either.
‘Is he going to die?’ Martha asks the doctor.
‘Maybe,’ Abbas says. ‘So, you must listen carefully.’
Martha nods. Martha listens. And Martha relays the instructions to Greenley. The leg injury is the big worry, especially if it does turn out to be a compound fracture. Apply a tourniquet above the man’s knee. If possible, gently elevate his leg ever so slightly – will a blanket do it? Yeah, a blanket. Clean water to sip – do we have clean water? Another blanket if his skin feels cold, or clammy. A blanket. One of those foil space blankets if you’ve got a kit to hand. Then Dr Abbas says, ‘I’m going to check something,’ and shortly afterwards returns with, ‘Listen, we’ve actually got a woman on call over your way. Brind – isn’t that close to you? My mapper says so. Ask Greenley if he wants me to pull her in.’
Martha just keeps nodding. A sensation of slipping out to sea, having misjudged a fast tide. She tells them, and Greenley nods back.
‘Greenley says yes,’ Martha tells Abbas. ‘Please.’ Flinching as the injured man vomits bile down his cheek, his facial scars throbbing purple.
‘I’m going to hang up, all right Martha? I’m going to hang up so I can call this woman – Agnes, she’s called – and get her over to you. In the meantime, I want you to try and stabilise the man. Tourniquet, remember. No movement. And keep him warm, even if he’s feverish. Agnes is coming.’
Martha nods. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Yes.’
‘I’m going now,’ the doctor says. ‘All right? Martha? I’m going now. Agnes is coming.’
And then Abbas is gone.
Martha stares at the injured man, broken on the lurid grass. The others working on him. Greenley stroking the man’s cheek with a strange, unlikely tenderness. What’s left of the Birmingham City shirt black with sweat and groundwater. Rolly applying pressure at the thigh. Sharon, seemingly in bits behind her scarf, clinging to the first-aid kit she was told to fetch from the lab, apparently never used before. A kit kept down there lest Greenley do something stupid with a scalpel, or a chisel, or in case one of the prostheses snaps in some dangerous way. Their false bones are honed like blades, after all – a fact Greenley always seems so proud of.
* * *
Soon through the valley comes the whine of heavy electrics. A four-by-four, dual-motored and tall on its chassis, tearing up the steep hill below the allotments.
‘That better be her,’ Greenley says, hand shielding his eyes. And it is her, of course: the doctor, Agnes, driving manually, face hard behind the wheel. The four-by-four slides to a stop in the mud, and Agnes emerges from the door with a captivating speed and purposefulness. She pulls out a tool bag and comes marching round her vehicle, whose engine bay hisses with coolant. A look of contempt for them, Martha thinks, imagining Agnes’s internal commentary: hemp-sniffers, hippy-bloody-dippies, half-baked dreamers. Projection, maybe, but Agnes’s disdain seems deep-set in the brow. Her red hair blows wildly about her.
‘Agnes?’ Greenley says.
‘Naw,’ she says. ‘The fucking tooth fairy.’ A glance across the site, another grimace, and then she sticks her head in the damaged electric car to triage the terrible cargo inside. A cough, indifferent-sounding, before she returns. ‘Good to be here,’ she says. ‘The auld granda’s definitely gone.’
‘He is,’ Greenley says. ‘Yes.’
Agnes motions to the injured man. ‘And he’s the only other?’
Greenley nods. ‘He’s it.’
Agnes kneels down by the injured man. ‘Shite day you’re having,’ she says. She rummages in her coat pockets; bolts a manual stethoscope to the man’s chest, counts under her breath. Sheathes his forefinger with a little white box. Finally, she taps a little capsule on her overshirt collar and speaks into herself: ‘Suspect crush injury. BP and pulse elevated. Sats way down.’
‘He going to be all right?’ Sharon asks.
Agnes doesn’t shrug, but Martha decides she was about to. It’s clear the man is fading, his head lolling about on Sharon’s jumper. ‘Unwell, aye,’ Agnes says. ‘We know what happened, exactly? This all crash damage?’
None of them can answer. The unknown factors being the dead old man with the gun, whether the injured man was in some way responsible. The Birmingham City top, and the clear possibility the two men were refugees of the city, of the attack.
Agnes traces a circle in the air above the man’s torso. Starts tapping his sternum. ‘Blunt trauma. Dashboard or steering wheel’d do it. Wasn’t driving manually, though, was he? No steering wheel in the car, right? So I’d go with the former. Hit something fast enough, you get this kind of mess. Could someone open my wee tool bag there?’
Martha, being closest and empty-handed, does as Agnes asks. Inside, a hodge-podge of elastic-banded implements, measuring instruments. A dark green cloth, wrapped with gaffer tape.
‘Over here,’ Agnes says. ‘Quit dawdling.’
Martha pulls the bag towards the doctor. Watches, unblinking, as the doctor peels out an oxygen mask and carefully applies it to the man’s mouth. Watches intently as the doctor shaves, swabs and cannulates the man’s forearm with a thick needle. ‘IV access,’ Agnes says, apparently sensing Martha’s scrutiny, or the change in her breathing. ‘We push in some fluids. Analgesia.’ She looks up and winks. ‘I brew good junk.’
This done, Agnes begins to press her hand into the man’s side, working from armpit to hip. ‘Pooched his ribs,’ she tells the group. ‘Tenderised himself, poor fud. But it’s mainly the shape of that leg that’s getting to me.’
Now the doctor begins to scissor away the rest of the man’s jeans, revealing twisted pulp at the knee, bone visible and bright fat ballooning like settee foam. Agnes pitches over and frowns at the tourniquet, looks along the leg. Her expression is more fascinated than appalled. ‘Well, that’s not the colour we wanted.’ She looks up at the allotmenteers, all ranged around her. ‘Derm or no derm, you’re better getting him to hospital and praying for clemency. The machines won’t listen, obviously – but if there’s a decent goon on duty, you might be able to wangle a pass to surgery. Either way, this is gammy, and we don’t have long to save it.’ She tilts her head to the plots behind her. �
�Unless you wanted to make a donation of your own…’
Greenley, Rolly and Sharon exchange glances, then gaze out towards the limb-trees. Agnes looks at Martha, watching the whole thing play out. All eyes fixed on the hands in their tracks, the limbs they nurse. It’s there, then, right in between them: the presence of the idea, quite palpable, being made solid by consensus. Martha is stung by the realisation, a subsidence inside her. Something squirming. She wonders if this has all happened by design – if the man was already injured before the crash, knew what they grew and sold on these allotments, and aimed the car accordingly. If her shed was somehow a node on the car’s pathfinder.
Agnes raises her eyebrows. ‘That a yes, is it?’
‘We do have some mature units ready off the shelf,’ Greenley says solemnly. ‘If it’s really what you’d recommend.’
Martha’s head is spinning. A new word on repeat: amputation.
Agnes licks her lips. ‘I wouldn’t recommend anything other than cracking on with it.’
‘Then go for it,’ Greenley says. ‘I’d sooner that than do nothing.’
‘You have indemnity? I’m not covered for foreigners, let alone non-consensual work. It’s on your head.’
Greenley nods. ‘For the parts, yes.’
A hush as Agnes thinks some more about it.
‘I’m not a miracle worker, either,’ she says. ‘Just so you know.’
Sharon folds her arms. ‘He’s hardly in a fit state to complain, is he?’
Agnes grins. ‘True. So one of you better get Abbas on the blower again. Ask him to connect me to an on-call surgeon – I’ll need a guide. And Mr Greenley, come and show me where you keep your saws.’
6
The surgeon calls Agnes an hour later, when the evening is drawing in and the midges are blooming and the hooped shadows of the viaduct stretch long through the valley. With all the pieces in place – a makeshift stretcher, bucket and rags, a pallet full of cotton wool, swaddling and alcohol – things start to move around Martha at a queasy speed.