“I didn't even know that at the time. I was in agony from the induced contractions. I couldn't have cared less for any other machine than the one providing relief. Though that was seeming to get less and less effective by the breath. I suppose that's why there were so many doctors.”
“I bet you don't even remember them preparing you for theatre. They put the spinal injection in before the local anaesthetic had taken effect and you puked all over the floor and on one of the nurses who seemed to try to catch it. You were near enough passing out by then.”
“All I remember of that, was after the anaesthetic had started and I was laid down with the sheet in front. I didn't even realise they had started doing their thing until I heard the first cry,” Shannon said.
“They didn't say anything about starting. I was just sat there in the way looking like a tourist in scrubs with a camera around my neck. The worst bit after that was they pulled him out and then said I could see him, but they put him on a table at the tail end. I had to block my eyes as I walked straight past the surgeons stitching you up, fighting the urge to have a look at the goriest sight of my wife I would ever hope to have.”
“Well apart from for that one photograph, I didn't get to see him again for three hours, while I was waiting to regain feeling in my legs. I was wiggling my toes with all my mental strength so I could get out into a wheel chair and see him. It was unbearable. There was just one nurse in this entire huge open room and just me lying there, paralysed. At least I knew you were with him.” Shannon cooed and stroked Zeke's head. “I'm so happy to have him. It was all worth it.”
“He looks well asleep, I'm going to put him down properly,” Leighton said. He did so and that time, Zeke barely stirred.
Chapter 11
The day that Mina looked forward to all week came around. Thursday evenings, Rebecca stayed at her Nan’s house and Mina knew that she could call and get a real chance to speak with her daughter. Mina refused to call Drew, regardless of the reason to do so. The chances were too high that she would also have her sister answer the phone and she wasn’t ready for that. She spoke to Rebecca regularly enough when she was called directly by her, but Thursday evening was her chance to take charge and reach out to her only daughter herself.
The phone rung, Mina loved the anticipation, knowing who was to answer the phone.
“Hello, Nan’s house, Rebecca here,” came the innocent voice.
“Hi, lovely. It’s me, as always at this time,” Mina replied.
“Hello, Mum. You always call when I am here.”
“It’s because I know that it will always be you who picks up the phone and I like talking with you. How is school going, honey?”
“It’s fun, today we had dancing class. I got paired with Jennifer and we got to go in the big hall. We had loads of space to spin around. Then we had a maths lesson and after that, English. Maths was boring, but we read poems out in English and that was really fun. Nan picked me up after school and made fish fingers and chips with ketchup. What was your favourite thing you did today, Mum?”
“My favourite thing today, before calling you of course, was picking some flowers from the meadow. Would you like it if I sent some to you, Rebecca? I will find some in your favourite colour and send those. What’s your favourite colour today?”
“My favourite colour is…” Rebecca paused. “Nan, what is my favourite colour today?” she called away from the phone.
Mina heard her own mum in the background. “You should know, darling. What was it yesterday?”
“I think it was purple,” Rebecca replied.
“You think? Do you still like that colour now, like the curtains in your room?”
“I’m not sure.” A long pause came. Mina waited patiently.
“Well, tell your mum that you aren’t sure then,” Mina’s mum said eventually.
“Mum, are you still there?” came Rebecca’s voice, clearer again.
“Of course, I am, Lovely. Did you decide on your favourite colour?”
“I think I will say I’m not sure. Is that okay, Mum?”
“Absolutely, that’s probably the best colour to choose really. Do you know why?” Mina asked.
Rebecca made a few loud fillers and tapped on the phone handset. “I don’t know. Why is that the best colour?”
“It’s the best colour to choose because it means I can send you all the flowers I have picked and then whichever colour you pick to be your favourite will be there!”
“You’re going to send me all the flowers? Yes!” Rebecca turned away from the phone again. “Nan, Mum is going to send me all the flowers.”
“All of them? That’s great,” was her nan’s simple response.
“When can I come and visit you, Mum?”
Mina’s heart jumped a little. “Ah, my lovely. I wish it was as easy as saying yes.”
“Why isn’t it?”
“Oh, darling.” Mina paused, not knowing how to continue. “I will tell you what, though. I am making a lovely house here. It has a beautiful garden with a meadow. The meadow has flowers of all different colours and smells wonderful. The bees really love it. One day you will be able to come and play with me here. I built a swing for you in a tree that you can have a go on and it goes really high!”
“I want to see the meadow and play on the swing, Mum! That sounds better-than-dancing fun.”
“You will. The problem now is that it isn’t finished. It isn’t ready for you yet. It may take a little while, so I need you to be patient. Can you do that for me? That’s why I will send you flowers. Then you will have a little piece of that meadow with you. Can you wait until it’s ready to come and visit, though?” Mina felt a lump in her throat.
“I am not sure, Mum. Must I wait? Don’t I get to choose?”
“I wish you could choose. I wish I could choose. We don’t always get our choices, Rebecca. Sometimes we must do things a certain way. I do promise you that by the time we can choose for you to come, it will be ready for you. You will have your own room and we will decorate it together.”
“Can we paint it purple?”
“You can paint it whatever colour you wish. It is empty right now, waiting for you.”
“Thanks, Mum.”
“I love you, Rebecca. You had better go and do your homework before bed. What have you got to do today?”
“I have to do spelling,” Rebecca said, making a noise with her tongue out just after.
“Spelling is good, Rebecca. It means you can write and learn words that make you sound intellectual and articulate.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you can sound smart. Now, be good for Nan. Tell her I love her.”
“Do you want to say it to her?”
“No, you tell her.”
“What about Daddy?”
“Perhaps you should go do your spelling. Next time we speak you should tell me a new word you’ve learnt. Can you do that for me? Can you remember your favourite word?”
“OK, Mum. I love you, bye.” The phone clicked before Mina could respond.
Mina felt instantly both drained and elated. She couldn’t spend much longer without her daughter here. Every week, these calls would reinvigorate her sense of purpose when on other days it could feel totally destroyed. She had all her dreams to fight for. Dreams of Rebecca playing in the meadows. Mina knew she had those memories yet to create. She couldn’t give up.
The phone rang with Mina still stood next to the handset.
“Hi, it’s Mina,” she answered.
“I know it’s Mina. I called her!” came the woman’s voice.
“Ah, Grace, very good timing.”
“Pub?” They both said in unison.
“Yes,” Mina responded.
Chapter 12
Tariq had read through the live-text feed from the night of the riots to see if there had been similar incidents across the city at the same time. He had difficulty even finding any of the posts associated with his story. Eit
her some of his messages had not been sent or received correctly or his posts had been deemed not worthy of entry into the list. The latter didn’t seem to ring true to him though. There were a number of other reporters listed, most of whom were following a tame series of events led by peaceful activists. Some of his earlier posts from the night were up, but none containing any reference to KoYΔ or the violence he had witnessed. He shuddered as he replayed the last images of the night in his head of the two groups stepping slowly towards each other and the echoes of gunshots that followed him as he fled.
He angrily called his mentor at the paper, but was fobbed off without any serious reasoning as to why he had been blackballed from the article. The man rambled on about nothing, stuttering over his words. All Tariq got was the task of writing up what he had witnessed and if it was good enough it could get published in the submissions portion of the website. Tariq was peeved. The insomnia of the last few nights, unable to truly sleep nor truly wake still left its mark on his mind. Since the night of the KoYΔ riots – as he named them in his head – the anger towards The Vigilante and his mentor’s disregard was the first thing he could recall actually feeling. At least for the time being he could use the energy to do something productive. He sat down and started typing. At first, an overview of what he could recall, then occasionally referring to his sent messages and recordings to fill in the gaps and complete his picture of events.
He worked solidly for hours until only the light of his computer screen lit the room. Nearing the end of the story he became overwhelmed by emotion. He realised that he hadn’t yet found out what had happened to them. The people that for a short time took him in, even while they were destroying everything around them and striking fear into civilians and no doubt the police at the same time. He felt like the time among them gave him an understanding of why they were doing it. With everything the government was apparently doing cloak-and-dagger, it felt justified. He felt that if he was there again now he would have helped them, assimilated with them, taken up their fight for the people. A people unknowing of the situation they were being forced into.
The zeal grew up inside of Tariq as his exhausted mind ran over the same details repeatedly, each time developing feedback and growing in intensity. He succumbed to tears before realising what needed to be done. His article could save those that had offered him sanctuary. He needed to share the message on the largest platform he had so that everyone could know what was happening. He started a new article there and then. This one was to detail everything that he had learned about the British government in the last few weeks since meeting ‘AH6015’, a man he felt was more truly his mentor than his coach at The Vigilante.
Halfway through a sentence he noticed a flashing icon on his screen. It was ‘AH’ messaging him. Tariq told him about the article he was writing and ‘AH’ agreed that regardless of what happened with the paper, he would share his article on his own site. ‘AH’ then shared the real reason he had come on to talk with him. He gave Tariq an address and the note that should he need to vacate the city he could head there. This came before a flurry of links into foreign news articles from across the web. Muharid involvement in the north of Iraq had brought together U.S. and Russian troops into a supposedly accidental firefight that was responsible for deaths on both sides. Russia and Germany had now contracted a military alliance and were preparing action on Britain for the war crimes committed in the Middle East. Supposedly, a deadline for the prime minister to step down and face the international criminal court had been set for in four days’ time. This revelation brought with it much research that lasted until the orange glow created by Tariq’s curtains flooded the room. There was nothing about this anywhere in the UK’s mainstream media. He reacted simply by texting and sending messages to every news broadcaster he could think of. This needed to break. The population of Britain deserved to know. It should know already.
Feeling accomplished yet debilitated, Tariq finally found sleep.
Tariq awoke again, well into the late afternoon. The only thing that stopped him from rolling over and going back to sleep was the urgency he felt to get his article published. He splashed cold water over his face to help wake up faster and almost immediately after reached for his phone.
“Greg,” his mentor answered.
“Hey, man. I sent you that article you wanted.”
“Great stuff, I will check it tomorrow.”
“There’s also another article alongside it. I think it is tremendously important. I have been able to find out some information from overseas sources that isn’t being broadcast in any way in this country. You can be the first paper to leak the news. It’s massive.”
“How massive?” Greg asked, audibly irked.
“We need to tell the British people about a large-scale attack on their homes and work spaces if we don’t immediately bring our government and leaders to justice for war crimes.”
“Oh,” Greg said, nonplussed “That. Well, I will let you know now that there is no chance, regardless of what you think you know, that we will run a fear article based on rumour.” Greg sighed loudly on the phone. “Journalism isn’t all that, here. We aren’t revolutionaries, we have a duty to the people to also maintain peace. If we run articles like that it could lead to more riots, looting, violence and that is not good for anyone.”
Tariq started to speak his retort, but was quickly cut off.
Greg said loudly and assertively, “I will see you tomorrow, right? Great. Bye for now,” before preceding to hang up the phone. The tone lingered in Tariq’s frustrated mind.
Tariq took himself down to The Vigilante’s offices early the next day, printed article manuscripts in his hands as he walked determinedly through the rotating doors. At this point he hadn’t slept straight or at night in a week. At that moment, it was only his pure stubbornness and persistence that kept him moving on and helping him avoid a collapse into a long and overdue sleep. He knew Greg would be in the canteen at this time so he went straight there.
Greg looked up from his phone with a start as Tariq pulled out the chair opposite him. He took a seat and leant forward with the printed articles pressed to the table in front of him. Greg took a slow sip of his coffee, unfazed as if he had known ahead of time that he would be accosted by his very tired and tenacious protégé at this very moment.
“Morning, Tariq,” he spoke first.
“Morning, Greg. I wanted to speak to you about the article in person. I know you can be reasonable on this. The people of the country need to do what they can to stop them falling into a war that it will never win. More importantly, a war they are thrust into because of the aristocratic greed of the political class. We, as human beings, need to give them a chance to do what’s right, even if we don’t tell them what to do. In this case, we must only present the facts – and quickly – and then leave any decisions to the people of the country.” Tariq sighed deeply, having run out of his planned words so soon. “Would you not want that opportunity if your life was to be taken out of your hands?”
“Tariq, I must say that I love your tenacity, but we have two problems. One,” Greg extended his index into the air. “One, is that I have no documented proof of what you are saying. Two, is that even if – and that’s one massive ‘if’ for you – if you could prove it, we have a duty to keep people safe. If we release the article saying that the country is liable to be declared war upon in – what is it? – three days, then that will certainly create chaos to anyone who reads and more importantly, believes it.” Greg calmly took another long sip of coffee. “Two. Even those that believe, and if they were in large enough numbers, would they be able to enact the necessary powers to bring the prime minister to ‘justice’?” Greg put quote marks in the air around the last word.
“That would be the whole point and whole necessity of it. All it really needs is enough people to demonstrate the desire to weed out the bad apples from our government and for the major powers around the world to realise that it is only the l
eadership and the people should be spared of the grief which I am pretty sure they are lining up to inflict, given all that Britain has done in colonisation and building of empire in the recent history of the world,” Tariq said.
“That is all well and good, but if these other powers have already made a decision about us then we have already lost. For every one percent of the population that are ready to take up arms and fight for whatever is right – or wrong – there is only probably another nine percent that agree or disagree in any visible way. Ninety percent of the population will either not understand at all, will assume that somebody-else-will-get-the-phone, or just bury it out of site with a rhetoric of lies-and-propaganda,” Greg said. Tariq felt like he was losing the battle convincingly and hung his head. “Tariq, it means a lot to me that you have gone to all this effort, but I would strongly urge that you drop this.”
Not meeting Greg’s gaze, Tariq said, “I can’t.”
“You’re a smart guy, Tariq. Possibly smarter than me. I can see a great career in journalism ahead of you. This fire and passion you have right now will take you far, but it needs to be a long-lasting flame and right now you are going to burn everything around you and then wink out. This idea you have can burn a lot of bridges, so show that you can listen to advice and let it go.”
Tariq let the words sink in for a few moments. “Should I let people die, when I know I could save them?”
“You won’t save anyone with this. As with a lot of bad things that are set to happen, the Mayan prediction for the end of the world along with countless horror stories that never come to life, this may never happen. If it doesn’t, you could be the cause of many deaths amongst rioting and violence that could spread from these words like the root of a weed. Just think about that, Tariq. You need sleep. Go home and get some and we will talk tomorrow morning. There are a few things around here that I need your help with, but I need the you that came in on that first day, not the exhausted you that is sat before me now.” Almost as an afterthought he said, “The article from the London Eye is fantastic, by the way. Brilliant writing.” Greg then stood up and took the last gulp of coffee, leaving Tariq drained and alone with the clattering of cutlery and the rustling of reports that filled the canteen.
Ousted: A thrilling debut novel of survival and humanity Page 6