The Homecoming

by Rosie Howard

‘Look at this girl’s leg,’ ordered Ben.

  Startled, he looked first at Ben and then, obediently, at Maddy, whose lower leg was still incongruously bound with T-shirt strips and the beer bottle. The foot, including nail beds, was now as white as lard and the swelling had spread up her lower leg to her knee.

  ‘Right,’ he said, suddenly alert. ‘Come this way.’ He led them to a curtained cubicle, with the receptionist’s protest trailing off behind them.

  ‘You’ll need an X-ray immediately,’ he said after a brief examination, ‘although there’s no doubt it’s fractured. The orthopaedic surgeon will want to see you for sure. I’ll page him now.’

  Removing the makeshift splint was painful and the X-ray technician was ruthless but apologetic about moving her leg around to get all the angles she needed.

  By the time Maddy was wheeled back into the cubicle, clutching her own X-rays, she was sobbing wearily with pain and shock.

  ‘Hey, hey,’ said Ben, grabbing a tissue and wiping her face. ‘You’ve been quite the hard-ass up until now. I’ve had soldiers in the field with injuries like that who would have been screaming for their mum.’ He pressed a wodge of tissues into her hand and slipped outside the cubicle where she could hear him politely but firmly asking the nearest nurse to sort out some pain relief.

  ‘Chances are she’ll be going straight to surgery. They’ll deal with it,’ came the reply.

  ‘That could be another hour, Nurse. I strongly suggest something needs to be done now.’

  Sure enough, he returned with the junior doctor who quickly scribbled something on a clipboard and disappeared with it. Moments later, the grumpy nurse returned with a syringe and deftly taped a needle into the back of her hand. Maddy had never been more grateful to have a needle stuck into her.

  ‘I feel weird,’ she slurred a couple of minutes later.

  ‘Not surprised. Never mind beer, you’re on the hard stuff now. Better?’

  She considered the question carefully. ‘Not sure … It still hurts like hell but I don’t think I really care any more.’ She giggled, then clapped her hand over her mouth. ‘Oops. Think I’m a bit pissed.’

  The orthopaedic surgeon was a weary but kind-looking man who was more than familiar to Maddy.

  ‘Hello again,’ he said as he swept into the cubicle. ‘I never forget a fracture. What on earth have you been doing to my brilliant work?’ He grabbed the file of X-rays and plonked them on the light box. ‘Good grief. You really don’t like that leg of yours, do you?’

  ‘Don’t like it as much as I did this morning,’ she agreed.

  ‘You know I’m going to have to operate again, don’t you?’

  Maddy nodded, meekly.

  ‘Right,’ he said, giving her an appraising look. ‘I doubt you’re going to remember much of this, given the look of you, but I suppose I’d better run through the technical stuff.’

  He looked at Ben. ‘Can he stay?’

  Maddy nodded.

  ‘Okay, so … first time you rocked up with your foot nigh on broken off, remember? It’s all here,’ he said, waving at the file. ‘Not a pretty sight. Both your lower leg bones broken – tibia and fibula – with the broken ends rammed into your foot. Lovely, it was.’

  Ben winced, and squeezed Maddy’s hand.

  ‘So now,’ the surgeon went on, ‘my work then, if I say so myself, has held up rather well. Trouble is, the metal plates on your leg have held it together but transferred the forces downwards. Different mechanism of injury too, of course, a twisting injury this time. Last time it just looked like you jumped off a cliff and landed on your feet.’

  Ben raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

  ‘So we’ve got a thoroughly mashed up and displaced ankle here. The talus is broken, you’ve doubtless ruptured at least one ligament and, despite the plate, you’ve got a medial malleolus fracture,’ he broke off. ‘Or, to put it another way, you’ve broken the end off your tibia. Again. You’ll be in plaster to your knee and on crutches for at least six weeks.

  ‘Lucky for you I’ve got a slot on my operating schedule this afternoon, or at least I will have shortly.’ He turned away from them both and had a peremptory conversation with the mousey intern who had slunk in after him. ‘Reschedule my four o’clock to five o’clock and clear the rest of my list. This girl needs to go in straight away to restore circulation. Actually,’ he said, glancing again at the X-rays, ‘cancel the five o’clock too. This is going to take a while.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Maddy.

  ‘You don’t know how grateful you should be,’ he reprimanded her. ‘Doing a full repair straight away spares you having to have that fracture pulled straight before I’ve got you out cold on the table. Now you should thank me for that.’

  ‘Out cold is definitely the way to be,’ she agreed, remembering the agony three years before. Then her leg had been pulled and yanked mercilessly in A & E and then went through two temporary casts while the surgeon worked out how to piece it back together for her with all the metalwork she had now, presumably, destroyed.

  ‘Right,’ he said on the way out of the cubicle, his intern scampering behind him, ‘I’d better go and have a rummage through my Meccano set for a few nuts and bolts to fix that leg.’

  ‘He seems like a good guy,’ remarked Ben. ‘So you were in Sussex when you broke your leg before too?’

  ‘Yep,’ she said repressively, hoping he would leave it there. He did.

  ‘Alright if I pop out and deal with the receptionist dragon now?’ he asked instead. ‘She wants me to fill in a couple more pesky forms. Which reminds me, who do you want for your next of kin? Simon?’

  ‘God no!’

  He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I mean, no, better not him. He’s not great in a crisis; he’ll just come down complaining and picking fights with everyone.’

  ‘Your mum, then?’

  ‘Yes, okay, her details are in my phone. Here,’ she said, unlocking it and passing it over to him.

  ‘Good,’ he said, ‘because also I should give her a call for you. Let her know what’s going on. Better to hear from me than someone at the hospital.’

  ‘True. That would make her panic for sure. Can you …?’ Maddy hesitated. ‘I mean, she’s coming down on Tuesday and that’s fine, I don’t want her coming any earlier. Tell her she should stick with her current arrangements.’

  ‘I don’t mind doing that. Why the hesitation?’

  ‘I might need someone to give me a bit of a hand before then …’

  ‘I don’t mind doing that, either.’

  ‘I mean, I’ll be fine,’ she added hurriedly. ‘Obviously.’

  ‘Obviously,’ he echoed, with hollow irony.

  ‘They’ll let me out as soon as my leg’s fixed, but, you know … stairs and stuff. I don’t want them to not let me out …’

  ‘Not a problem,’ he said, putting his hand on hers briefly. ‘I’ll spring you out of here as soon as I can humanly persuade them to let you go. Promise.’

  The porter came for her while Ben was still engaged with the form-filling and, within minutes, Maddy, still in agony, was gratefully submitting to the general anaesthetic.

  She had a vague impression of her kindly surgeon reassuring her the operation had gone well and a sense of being moved through a series of brightly lit rooms, staff moving in and out of her field of vision, as she slept and woke and slept again.

  Waking up properly at last, Maddy found herself in a side ward with four beds, only hers occupied. It was dark outside and the light in the room was dim. Great. There wasn’t a soul in sight, so chances were she was stuck there until morning at least. She hated hospitals. Particularly when she was the patient. She wanted out with a fierceness close to panic.

  ‘So, someone’s awake,’ came a kindly Irish voice, belonging to a sweet-faced nurse in her twenties. ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting some supper?’

  ‘Not hungry,’ said Maddy, summoning a smile. ‘I’d like to go now, actually.’


  ‘At nearly midnight?’ queried the nurse pointing at the clock above the door. ‘Got a pumpkin carriage waiting to whisk you off now, have you?’

  ‘You called?’ said Ben, materialising in the doorway, as if by magic.

  ‘You’re still here! Where have you been?’

  ‘Other than popping in every hour on the hour to listen to you snoring, you mean?’

  ‘Was I snoring?’

  ‘And dribbling,’ he confirmed. ‘You’re a class act … but, in full answer to your question, I’ve been hanging out in the cardiac ward chatting to Patrick.’

  ‘At this time of night?’ said Maddy and the Irish nurse in unison.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Respect to you!’ said the nurse. ‘The ward sister’s fearsome about sticking to visiting hours …’

  ‘What, you mean Henrietta?’ asked Ben. ‘Or “Hetty darling”, as Patrick calls her … she was bringing us cups of tea.’

  ‘Was she now!’ the nurse exclaimed, in awe.

  ‘And Jaffa Cakes.’

  ‘You’re clearly quite the charmer,’ said the nurse, ‘although I doubt your ability to charm your way into seeing this girl home tonight as she is currently insisting.’

  ‘The charm was all Patrick’s when it comes to Henrietta,’ admitted Ben, ‘but I’ll certainly do my best with you … erm,’ he peered at her name badge, ‘Teresa.’

  ‘Hark at you,’ said Teresa, smiling in spite of herself. ‘As if I’ve got time to help this child get dressed, get her signed off and sort out her going-home prescription on top of everything else I have to do,’ she said, taking a prescription slip off the front of the clipboard and waving it in his face.

  ‘I saw the signs for the hospital pharmacy on the way to the cardiac ward. Are they open?’

  ‘Twenty-four seven.’

  ‘What do you say about you getting her up and dressed, and I’ll pop to get this sorted, then?’ said Ben persuasively.

  ‘And you’ll need to bring her straight back in if there is any sign at all of infection,’ lectured Teresa. ‘Fever, confusion, anything … and she’ll need to be brought back into the fracture clinic anyhow in a day or two.’

  ‘Noted,’ said Ben, saluting as he took the prescription from her and waved it in farewell.

  Maddy was pretty keen to get dressed before Ben returned but Teresa tutted as she handed her the still-damp T-shirt she had been wearing earlier.

  ‘And you’re to get properly dry clothes on you the moment you get home,’ she lectured. ‘And straight to bed with you, mind. And you need to take those antibiotics your friend is getting you without fail. The whole course …’

  By the time Ben returned with a bag full of drugs from the pharmacy, she was fully dressed and lying back on the bed. If she was honest, the effort had worn her out completely but she was keen not to show Teresa that. Or Ben.

  There was a wheelchair waiting by the bed, and Teresa had even produced a pair of crutches. ‘These are for use tomorrow at the earliest,’ she had insisted, waving them at Maddy. ‘You’ll leave my ward in that,’ she added, pointing at the wheelchair, ‘and no arguing.’

  ‘You’ll get none from me,’ said Ben, positioning it next to the bed and gesturing Maddy to get in, which she did, awkwardly and with his help.

  Getting back into the jeep was even more tricky. Ben insisted on her lying across the back seat as she had just a few hours before.

  ‘I don’t approve,’ he said. ‘You’d have been better staying on the ward until tomorrow, at least.’

  ‘But I just can’t bear to.’

  ‘I know.’

  Even the short journey back to the Havenbury Arms was too long to stay awake for. The next thing she knew, Ben was gently shaking her. She felt stiff, cold and shivery getting out of the jeep, and the prospect of getting upstairs to bed was no less daunting than being told she had to climb Everest.

  ‘Upsadaisy,’ said Ben, scooping her up into his arms again.

  ‘You’ll get a hernia,’ she said as she reached to unlock the door. ‘I’ve got crutches, for goodness’ sake.’

  ‘Tomorrow. At the earliest. You heard Teresa. Now, straight to bed I think,’ he continued, turning slightly sideways to get her up the narrow stairs without risking banging her damaged leg on anything.

  ‘Why, how very forward of you. No foreplay?’

  ‘Let’s skip the sexual marathon tonight, shall we? Which one’s your room?’

  Maddy indicated along the corridor to the tiny bedroom that had become her home over the last few weeks. Its narrow little bed was unmade, she realised, from that morning, which seemed a century ago.

  ‘In you get,’ he said, putting her gently down.

  ‘What, straight away?’

  ‘You need the bathroom?’

  ‘Yes, I do, actually. Plus I wouldn’t mind brushing my teeth.’

  ‘I’ll have to come in with you.’

  ‘You will not!’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, woman … Alright, here we go.’

  Ben deposited her next to the loo, waiting until she had her hand resting on the wall for balance before he let go.

  ‘I’ll wait outside,’ he announced, giving her a little bow. ‘Don’t lock the flipping door, whatever you do.’

  Maddy took stock. She managed to manoeuver herself onto the loo but then cringed at the thought he was outside the door listening.

  ‘Any chance you could find me some pyjamas?’ she called, by way of diversion.

  ‘Will do,’ he replied, sounding reluctant.

  Quickly Maddy went to the loo, flushed it, and barely hopping a couple of steps – luckily the bathroom was tiny – she was brushing her teeth by the time Ben handed in pyjamas and, cringingly, a pair of her not exactly ragged but not exactly brand-new pants.

  ‘You pee like a horse, by the way,’ he said as he dangled the clothes on an outstretched arm without even putting his head around the door.

  ‘You listened!’ she squeaked in outrage, spluttering toothpaste everywhere.

  ‘I suppose you aren’t going to let me help you change, either.’

  ‘Nope,’ she agreed, around a mouthful of toothpaste.

  ‘Fine,’ said Ben. ‘For goodness’ sake sit down while you do it. I’ll wait here.’

  God it felt good to put on clean, dry clothes. What she could really do with was a long hot bath, but she guessed he would definitely lose patience with that. In any case, it was now nearly two in the morning. He must be exhausted. She wondered if he would stay or go home, at last.

  ‘Would you like to stay the night?’ she offered primly as he carried her back to her little single bed.

  ‘Would I like … ? Of course I’m bloody staying the night. I’m hardly going to leave you on your own, am I?’

  Once he had helped her position her leg carefully on a pillow, he pulled the covers up and tucked them under her chin.

  Crouching by the bed he regarded her sternly. ‘Now listen, Maddy,’ he said, forcing her to meet his eye. ‘It’s really important you get your head in the right place over this. It’s a game-changer. You’re not going to be able to just carry on as if nothing’s happened.’

  She gave an infinitesimally small nod. ‘Got it,’ she said, clutching her covers under her chin, her hands curled like paws over the edge of the duvet.

  ‘No,’ he insisted. ‘You haven’t. Listen, your mission, for at least the next few days, is to focus on your injury. You need to take the painkillers, okay? Never mind the side effects – you just take them, no debate. You also need to eat if you can, or at least make sure you’re getting lots of fluids. Also, the more you can sleep the better. This isn’t something getting in the way of your life. It is your life …’

  ‘Gosh, you’re really bossy, aren’t you?’ she observed owlishly. ‘No prizes for guessing you were in the army.’

  ‘Okay, so, what did I just say?’

  ‘You said “take drugs, drink heavily, sleep with everyone …” Honestly! I
can just imagine you advising a teenage daughter one day.’

  Ben smiled in spite of himself. ‘Off to sleep with you,’ he said, straightening up.

  ‘Where are you sleeping?’

  ‘Here,’ he said, lying himself down on the floor beside the bed.

  ‘You can’t just sleep on the floor!’

  ‘Watch me,’ said Ben, rolling up his jacket and putting it under his head as a pillow. ‘After a day like today I could sleep on a clothes line. There’s a danger I won’t hear you in the night if I’m in another room.’

  ‘I won’t call you.’

  ‘You might,’ he said, with finality. ‘Now, go to sleep.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  Later, it must have been about five in the morning, Ben shook her gently awake and propped her partly upright.

  ‘Open wide,’ he said, steering a spoon with some clear liquid into her mouth and then handing her a glass of water.

  ‘Bleurgh,’ she spluttered.

  ‘I know. Drink some water.’

  ‘What is that horrible stuff?’

  ‘Says oral morphine on the bottle.’

  ‘I was sleeping,’ she complained drowsily. ‘The pain’s okay.’

  ‘And we need to keep it that way,’ he said, lowering her back down gently. ‘Can’t let you sleep through a dose when it’s due, you’ll wake up in agony. Now, back to sleep,’ he added gently, watching her for a moment and then lying back down on the floor.

  Maddy slipped restlessly from one dream to another, battling to get somewhere, she couldn’t remember where or why, with nameless obstacles in her path and then – suddenly and crushingly – she was back there:

  Searing pain in her leg, blood running down her face, heart pounding in panic as she waited, helplessly for it – for him – whatever it or he was – to come for her. Groaning, she tried to drag herself to safety … The fear. The cold. The pain. And then, as if it was inside her head, she heard a calm, gentle voice.

  ‘Where are you, Maddy?’

  She tried to reply, but no sound came.

  ‘Maddy?’ the voice came again. Insistent.